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The
DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

New Schools for Old

The Regeneration of the Porter
School

With Professor John Dewey
Schools of To-morrow

With Emily Child and Beardsley

RUML

Methods and Results of Testing
School Children

Manual of Tests Used by the Psy-
chological Survey in the Public
Schools of New York City,
Including Social and Physical
Studies of the Children Tested.

E. P. BUTTON & CO., Inc.

The
DALTON LABORATOET PLAN

BY

EVELYN DEWEY

Author of "New Schools fob Old," etc.

B. P. BUTTON & CO., Inc.

Copyright 1932, by
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY

All Right* B»$en*d

First Printing - - Jan., iQZi
Second Printing - - Nov., 1924
Third Printing - - Apr., 1930

Printtd in tht Unittd States of Amtriea

) D S cnti ES6

i-^LJ ' A. CALIFOBXJA

/o:i<^ ^•^•'-•^- •••

Q ^ 2 PREFACE

This book is an attempt to answer the ques-
tions of teachers and schools about the Dalton
Laboratory Plan. The plan is new. It has been
in operation in one school for eighteen months
and in two others for a little over one year.
Therefore, it is not possible to present it as a
tested and proved ** system," or to say that it
must be arranged in such and such a fashion. It
is better that it should be so ; for education will
never be static. It must develop and change
with the increase of human knowledge and the
changes in society. As long as man develops,
his education must develop.

Miss Parkhurst has suggested an arrange-
ment of the school building and program that
eeems to give children some of the things they
need to grow up successful adults in the world
of to-day. Though she has a strong personal
bias on the curriculum, the plan itself does not
dictate what facts or subjects children must
study. It promotes a natural and thorough way
of studying, a way that is in harmony with our

vi PREFACE

present knowledge of psychology, and that,
therefore, tends to develop intelligent habits.
The growth of character is the foundation of
education. The Dalton Laboratory Plan is an
experiment in an environment that permits
character development. The particular school
is the inheritance.

The exchange of information between
teachers and schools is essential for the im-
provement of both the environment and the in-
heritance. Each teacher makes discoveries as
she meets her problems. These discoveries need
to be shared in order to test and establish them
by use. Miss Parkhurst offers a new concep-
tion of school organization that has appealed
to many schools as a better way. It needs an
open-minded reception from all schools and
teachers, so that children may have the benefit
of whatever it can contribute and so that it
may be tested, altered and refined into a more
and more useful and growing tool.

The theme of the book follows as closely as
possible Miss Parkhurst 's conception of the
plan. We have been in constant consultation as
to facts and have freely exchanged opinions as
to theories. We have not always agreed about

PREFACE vii

the theories. The writer is responsible for the
educational generalizations and, therefore, any
discrepancies and disagreements should be laid
at her door.

Thanks are due to Miss Eosa Bassett, head-
mistress of the Streatham County Secondary
School, London, England, and to her teachers
and pupils for the history of the plan in their
school, and to Mr. Ernest Jackman for infor-
mation about the Dalton High School in Massa-
chusetts. Portions of the last chapter first ap-
peared in The Nation of May 4th, 1921, and are
reprinted with its consent.

E. D.

New York City, December, 1921.

CONTENTS

CHAPTSB PASS

/ I. The Plan 1

, II. The Laboratory 22

y m. The Assignments 45

IV. A Dalton High School 64

V. The Streatham County Secondary

School 93

y«' VI. Opinions of Teachers and Pupils 108

Vn. The Children's University School 132

Vni. The Need for an Improved Education . . 155

The
DALTON LABORATOEY PLAN

THE DALTON LABORATORY
PLAN

CHAPTER I

The Plan

The Dalton Laboratory Plan was developed
in an attempt to get a school organization that
would meet the needs of modern education
under public school conditions. Miss Helen
Parkhurst, the originator of the plan, conceives
of schools as sociological laboratories where
community life and community situations pre-
yail. The children are the experimenters. The
instructors are observers, who stand ready to
serve the community as their special talents are
needed. As observers, they study the children
to find out what environment will best meet the
immediate educational needs. As specialists.

2 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

their function is to give technique, to point the
way to the acquisition of information, and to
maintain intellectual and technical standards.
A new and radically different school organiza-
tion has been built up on this basis. The very
set-up of the school program enlists the coop-
eration of the children. By giving them real
jobs, their wills become an active force in the
learning process.

"^ A pupil in a Dalton school said, "I like this
school because each child has ample time to do
his work. In other schools, when you go into
arithmetic, you have to do arithmetic for half
an hour and you have to do so much that you
get mixed up. Here, if you begin to get tired
and can't make your mind work right on one
thing, you can go into another room and forget
all about the first thing, so you don't get mud-
dled up. Later, you can do the arithmetic. I
like it, too, because you can go on and do your
work and not be held back by children who are
slower."

It may be true that children do not know
what things are good for them, but it is equally
true that left to themselves they know the ways
that are good for them. If teachers watch

THE PLAN 8

children at play or at work out of school, they
can observe the conditions for efficient learning.
They will find very little in common between
their class-rooms with bells, fixed recitation
periods, and endless lectures, and the pupil's
own methods.

Out of school, a child knows what he is going
to do. Whether it is a block tower or a stamp
collection, the goal is there before the work is
started. In the class-room, there is often no
attempt to let the pupils in on the task at hand.
More lessons begin with "Class take down these
examples," or **Take out your histories, turn to
page 44, Mary begin at the second paragraph,"
than with even such a general statement as "We
will talk about the geography of Chile today."
Of course, the class knows that the history or
reading period has arrived. But the thread of
a task is easily lost when it is done under arbi-
trary conditions. Without this thread, it is
largely a matter of chance whether a pupil gets
any understanding or control of the material
presented as a "subject."

Playing or working at home, each child ad-
justs his task to his natural rate of speed for
working. He does a thing step by step without

4 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

obvious spurts of haste or moments of waiting.
In school, the speed of a class lesson is fixed
by the teacher. It is aimed to fit the average
ability of the class. But there is not a single
individual exactly at average. Each child has
his own rate of working, and the majority of
the class approximate the average rate. Yet
each one of these children is expected to follow
every direction the instant it is given. The re-
sult is, of course, that the slower pupils hit only
the high spots; fibs their attention on keeping
up; get confused and muddled and try to re-
member enough words so they can get through
the lesson. It is no happier for the children
who work rapidly. They are through before a
new direction is given, but they have to wait for
the teacher. Their minds wander. They have
just started on an interesting train of thought.
The new direction comes, and they are jerked
back to the lesson for another moment's atten-
tion. They grasp the point and are again hung
up. For both extremes there is a constant in-
terruption of interest and attention in order to
adjust to the class that tends to kill initiative.
Even the pupils nearer the average are not free

THE PLAN 6

to follow their natural rate, but must strain or
be bored in order to conform exactly.

In free activity, a child works until he is
through, or until he is tired and finds his atten-
tion wandering or his mind becoming confused.
In either case, he has grasped what he has done
and it has the value of a completed experience.
In the class-room, the opportunity to work by
orderly stages is dependent on the clock and the
skill of the teacher. Perhaps the class has been
roused to a high pitch of interest and mental
alertness; perhaps they are just beginning to
understand some difficult new material. Sud-
denly the bell rings. Books must be shut. The
lesson is over, and excited or tired minds are
jerked to a new subject.

The constant interruptions to natural and or-
derly mental processes imposed by the organi-
zation of the school program account for the
inadequacies of school education as much as
shortcomings in curricula. The mind is a ma- x'
chine that works continuously and at its own
rate. It can not stand constant overspeeding
or frequent periods of blankness without re-
volting. Every teacher feels sometimes that
she would like to shake her class into life and

6 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

response. They have been shaken so constantly
that the electric shocks of bells, rapid-fire
questions, competition and devices fail to
spur them to even the usual service. They let
their minds drift, expecting the teacher to guide
them in and out of the labyrinths of the daily
program with the minimum of cooperation on
their part. Is it any wonder that when we dis-
count effort and interest, school ceases to be-
come a developing process and the pupil gathers
only the moss of information that comes with
passivity? The Dalton Laboratory Plan offers
a school machinery without these features.
It will work with large classes and meager
budgets.

"' Miss Parkhurst says, **We have been viewing
things through the wrong end of the telescope.
What should be taught, or how this ought to be
ushered in, should not be the most important
problem in school improvement. We want
teachers with original ways sufficient to answer
the needs of each individual. Let us free th^m
from the yoke of method and system, and make
it possible for them to use their own good judg-
ment." This freeing process is the essential
'^ contribution of the plan.

THE PLAN 7

The plan suggests a simple and economical'^
reorganization of school machinery that per-
mits the school to function as a community. It
can be used as an efficiency measure without
making changes in the curriculum, or as the
first step in the development of a new basis for
elementary and secondary education. The plan
doesnot suggest a curriculum — it offers a way
By which school life can function as real life
functions in a community. School work is done
in such a way and under such conditions that
groups and individuals are brought into con-
stant inter-action, and it is impossible for any
one to live independently of others. The plan
has certain tangible pedagogic advantages for
public schools with their big classes and fixed
curricula. With them, it may be looked upon as
an efficiency measure for children, the learners.

The plan preserves grouping by grades. The
grading may be done in any way fitted to meet
the needs of the particular school. But it does
away with most of the drawbacks of grading.
Pupils work at their own rate of speed. They
may work fast in some subjects and more slowly
in others, and still remain with their group. The
quick pupil can go more thoroughly into sub-

1

8 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

jects that interest him, looking up special topics
or doing supplementary reading. The slow
child can confine himself to the essentials of a
subject and work on them until they are thor-
oughly mastered. Children with marked bents
can save time by hard work. This time can be
spent in the subject laboratory where there is
the equipment that feeds their particular in-
terest. A childlcan remain a member of his
appropriate age group and do some of his les-
sons with older and some with younger groups.
But the plan does more than preserve the ad-
vantages of individual study and subject pro-
motion. It requires a method of study that calls
forth the kind of intellectual and moral habits
that are so necessary for the development of
an intelligent, responsible and successful citi-
zen.

The reorganization plan worked out by Miss
Parkhurst is adapted to eight grades, begin-
ning with the fourth grade or its equivalent.
Children would begin to work under the plan
when they have finished the first three years of
school and would continue working under it
until they enter a college or university. Since
it makes no demand on the curriculum, it can

THE PLAN 9

be used for schools divided into intermediate
grades, and junior and senior secondary depart-
ments or to schools with a four-year secondary
course.

The plan preserves grades for convenience in
handling the children, but instead of class-
rooms and one seat for each pupil there are sub-
ject laboratories. One or more rooms are as-
signed for each subject that is taught in the
school. This specializing starts in the fourth
grade instead of in the secondary department
as in most schools at present. Instead of keep-
ing the teacher a ''jack of all trades,'' each be-
comes a specialist in charge of one of these
laboratories. In the youngest grades, where
there are not now subject teachers, the grade
teachers can be assigned to subjects on the
basis of their interests and special aptitudes.
In the usual elementary school, the grade
teacher now has to teach physical culture, hand
work and art, regardless of her interest or
talent. Such an arrangement necessarily in-
volves a waste of time. Under the Dalton Plan,
grade teachers with special aptitudes can be
assigned to laboratories where they give the

10 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

pupils of all grades the benefit of their interest
in a particular subject.

Like all machinery for instruction, the
smaller the pupil unit per teacher the more ef-
ficient the teaching. At the same time, the plan
will function with the units that are found in
the usual large public school. A secondary-
school that is using the plan in England has
a unit of about one hundred and ten pupils per
teacher. Miss Parkhurst believes that a teacher
can meet two hundred pupils as well as she can
handle that same number in the usual class
periods. In large schools there may be a num-
ber of laboratories for each subject; each as-
signed to one teacher who devotes her time to
certain grades. Instead of having one labora-
tory for all the work in mathematics, there will
be one for each mathematics teacher. Each will
be used by the pupils of the grades she is in
the habit of teaching. If she finds the attend-
ance so uneven as to interfere with the pupils*
work, she can fix certain hours for helping cer-
tain classes. In this way, she will not have to
deal with any more children at one time than
she does at present.

Having the pupils go to special rooms for

THE PLAN 11

each subject permits economy in equipment. In
geography, for instance, instead of maps,
globes, atlases and reference books for each
grade, one set of such material is installed in
each geography laboratory. Since the teacher
is in this laboratory during the part of the
school day set aside as ** laboratory time,'*
material is available at any minute. The
school library can be made more useful
than it often is. Each laboratory will have a
shelf of books where volumes that are commonly
used for special reference and supplementary
readings, as well as those that may stimulate
the children to further research, are kept. Any
book that a teacher or pupil wants is thus avail-
able at a moment's notice.

Many educators believe that pupils suffer
from too frequent changes of teachers. Under
the Dalton Plan, a child will have the same
teacher in the same subject year after year. His
first year he must adjust to a different person-
ality for each subject. After that, his work
may change from year to year, but he will be
dealing with the same teachers.

Each pupil has his work of the school year
broken up into contract jobs. There are as

12 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

many contracts as there are months in the
school year. These consist of outlines or as-
signments of the work that are posted for each
grade in each subject at the beginning of the
month. The child reads these assignments and
sees his work for a month, hence the word con-
tract assignment or contract 30b. Seeing what
he is to do, he accepts the contract and agrees to
accomplish it. The actual working of this plan
can best be illustrated by specific example.
Horace Marshall is a pupil in the fifth grade

in a Dalton public school in the city of .

School hours are from 8:45 A. M. to 4:00 P.
M., with an intermission from 1 :00 to 2 :00 P. M.
From 8:45 A. M. to 12:00 noon is considered
free time. It belongs wholly to the pupil and it
;is his responsibility to organize it to suit his
ineeds. The half hour between 12 :00 and 12 :30
is taken up with pupil assembly, special work,
or committee meetings. During this time, the
academic instructors meet for faculty confer-
ence. The following half hour is devoted to
group conferences. All the pupils of a grade
report to an academic instructor at this time,
but they report to a different teacher each day,
so that there is a weekly report for each grade

THE PLAN 18

in each subject. The remainder of the day may
be used for work in art, manual training, recre-
ation or athletics, any work which can be readily
handled in grade groups.

The school year is ten months. Horace
studies five academic subjects, — ^history, mathe-
matics, geography, English literature and some
form of science. Therefore, Horace has five
contract jobs a month, or fifty during the school
year. Besides this, he will have a certain
amount of work in special subjects — gymna-
sium, carpentry or art. As far as the school
staff permits, this work should also be man-
aged by contract jobs in subject laboratories.
Where such instructors are on part time only,
these subjects may be conveniently handled in
groups in the afternoon, or at the close of the
morning's socialized time. Horace works in all
of these subject laboratories instead of in one
fifth-grade room. He has a locker for his per-
sonal school belongings instead of a desk. His
group is under the special care of some one
teacher, and will meet in her laboratory for a
short period each day, usually at the beginning
of the morning. Horace's advisor talks over
class plans and .problems with the children,

14 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

makes announcements and suggestions to help
groups and individuals in planning their day's
work. Then Horace and his class-mates get out
their assignment cards. On these cards, they
have copied in detail the work of the monthly
contract in each subject.

There is no time schedule, no bell to summon
Horace from one room to another. He deter-
mines to work on his geography this morning
and so goes to the geography laboratory. His
work may be reading references, questions to be
answered, maps to be drawn or other pertinent
matter. He carries on his work independently,
entering and leaving the room when and as he
pleases. The time he spends there is deter-
mined entirely by his interest-span and his fa-
tigue. If other fifth-grade pupils are in the
laboratory at the same time he may join them.
The group is allowed to talk, help each other,
exchange books and papers, in fact they should
be encouraged to work together. As they work,
they make notes on questions they can not an-
swer among themselves or on any point where
the teacher's advice is needed. She is in the
laboratory during the whole morning helping
groups or individuals, so Horace is free to go

THE PLAN 15

to her as he requires assistance. Or she may
call his group to her to see what they are doing,
discuss difficult questions or make suggestions
about better ways of working. i

Before leaving the laboratory, Horace indi-j
cates on the instructor's subject graph the*
amount of work completed. If he is in any
doubt as to the amount covered, he may ask the
instructor to assist him in this. He also indi-
cates the amount he has done by a line on his
own contract card. If he leaves before the end
of the free laboratory work time, he will select
another subject, go to that laboratory and work
there as he did in the geography room.

If Miss Parkhurst's program is followed
exactly, Horace will have an hour at the end of
the morning for group work with his own grade.
The first part of this he will spend in assembly,
in work for the school activities he is interested
in, or in having a special lesson, or giving a
group report with all or part of his grade. The
last half hour he spends in a regular form or
group meeting. Since he has only one of these a
week in each subject, it will not pass as the daily
recitation does. Miss Parkhurst calls this
group work, "class meetings or conferences" in

16 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

order to distinguish it from the ordinary reci-
tation or oral lesson period. Enough time
should be given class conferences to enable the
teacher to present things relating to the subject
outside the pupil's experience, things impos-
sible for him to discover with his limited time
and equipment ; to guide real discussions of the
subject by the pupils and to review and round
up the assignment.

In the afternoon, Horace's grade will prob-
ably have a more regular time-table. Gymna-
sium, recreation, music and certain kinds of shop
work, notably cooking, depend upon organized
groups for their value and their success. Part
of the afternoon may be spent on a time-table
and part in free study for art and carpentry,
or all of it may be given over to classes and time
found for more than one recitation a week in
the academic subjects. Recitations in Ameri-
can schools correspond to what are known as
oral lessons in English schools.

One of the advantages of the plan is that
each school can adopt the time-table best suited
to its needs. The one essential is that enough
time be saved for free study to enable the pu-
pils to work on contracts instead of daily les-

THE PLAN 17

Bons, and to work at their own rate of speed.
Whether pupils have home work to do besides
the time put in in subject laboratories will de-
pend on the length of the school day and the
proportion of the day given to free study and
to classes. In Horace's all-day school, the chil-
dren ought to get practically all their work done
in school. In the English school that will be
described later, pupils have practically as much
to do at home as they did under the old plan.
When the laboratory time is not long enough to
do aU the work required in the contract, some
time should be spent in planning with the pupils.
The first attack on new problems, reference
work, map drawing, anything that is likely to
prove difficult or that requires the use of appar-
atus and equipment should be done in school,
and literature, essays and drill work where the
principles have been mastered should be saved
for home study. «^

The laboratory plan has given its pupils a
definite advantage in mental and social habits
where it has been tried. Free study time has
made it possible for children to adjust their
work to their own rate of speed. This elim- /
inates idleness for the quick child and over-/

18 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

strain and jumping for the slow child. It per-
mits continuity of interest and effort by minim-
izing artificial interruptions. But above all, it
permits children to learn by the scientific
method, to investigate and discover for them-
selves.

Pupils differ in their likes and dislikes of
subjects. The time needed for mastering a sub-
ject is dependent upon the interest the pupil
feels in it — the greater the interest, the less the
time required. Subject antipathies are usually
identical with subject weaknesses. Readjust-
ment of the time schedule permits individual
pupils to devote more time to their particular
obstacles with the result that antipathies are
eliminated.

It is well known that pupils often undervalue
the time of their instructor. Their own time,
however, is generally rated with some accuracy.
That it can be utilized with maximum efl&ciency
under the Dalton Plan is shown in the arrange-
ment of the school day described above.

The usual class-room organization, in spite
of the number of children working together, has
few of the characteristics of group work as
carried on outside the school-room. Classes are

THE PLAN 19

too large. Individual differences, ability and
interest-span are too varied to enable the class
to function as an entity. Small groups that
come together voluntarily in the subject labor-
atory can work creatively. Interest in the im-
mediate problem has drawn individuals to-
gether. Each is anxious to contribute and to
listen. Since the study that preceded this dis-
cussion was individual, each has an individual
point of view and special information. Putting
all this together, the result is a more thorough,
finished, and child-like piece of work than is
possible under a system of recitations.

Miss Parkhurst feels that different subject la-
boratories permit the children to enjoy a larger
world. In any one laboratory the work paral-
lels the life of a real community. The children
deal with each other, they share experiences and
communicate them to others. There is a com-
mon interest in the study in each laboratory, a
thing impossible in a room where several sub-
jects are being taught. The atmosphere of the
laboratory eliminates to a considerable degree,
if not entirely, the ** drive'* which is often evi-
dent in a class-room. Besides the intermingling
within the grade referred to above, there is, of

20 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

course, intercourse with other groups. Older
children are able to help younger with work and
assignments they have already been over.
Younger pupils read the assignments and see
children working in grades beyond their own.
The spirit of mutual respect and responsibility
that arises from friendly pupil-teacher rela-
tions among children is recognized. While pu-
pils do not do identical work, the relationship
between advanced science and elementary
science is closer than that between different
subjects in the same grade. Experiments in
geography do not differ in kind, only in degree.
This similarity tends not to distraction, but to
positive helpfulness. There is a legitimate dis-
order in a carpentry shop, which would be dis-
turbing to the atmosphere of an English labora-
tory. If a child is working on a problem in
English which involves carpentry, Miss Park-
hurst believes it is better for him to decide to
go into the carpentry shop. This is of real
benefit in two ways. It definitely classifies his
knowledge, and it brings to him a clearer under-
standing of the interrelation of his subjects.
Its effect upon his nervous organism is also
noticeable. Freedom to move about produces a

THE PLAN 21

certain relaxation which releases energy for
other purposes.

Each individual and each group learns that
privileges may not be enjoyed without a corre-
sponding responsibility. It is not what they do,
so much as whether or not they feel each piece
of work as their own responsibility.

The relation of teacher and pupil is trans-
formed. Instead of the *' lock-step" rule, a nat-
ural contact is established. A respect without
fear, a joy in daily living, a willingness to do
hard work — all these and more have been ob-
served in the schools where the plan has been
tried.

CHAPTER II

The Laboratoey

The reorganization of a school on the Dalton
Plan will change conditions for study. A flex-
ible attitude towards these changes is necessary
if the plan is to succeed. The teacher can no
longer judge each pupil on the basis of the
amount they learn in comparison with the other
members of the class. Where pupils are study-
ing individually, they must be judged individu-
ally. The teacher must appraise the contract
as a whole. She cannot divide it into daily
portions each to be marked good or bad. Until
it is complete, her function is not to grade, but
to give expert assistance and advice, so that
subject matter is mastered and general prog-
ress is made according to the ability of the
individual child. At the same time, there must
be some daily check on the amount of work a
pupil is doing. This is as essential for him as

22

THE LABORATORY 23

for his teacher. Each child is working on at
least five assignments at a time. He must be
able to know how far he has progressed with
each. To give him the moral advantages that
come from individual study, some device must
be used by which he can check his own progress.

Miss Parkhurst has developed a system of
record keeping for teachers and pupils that has
worked efficiently in several American schools.
A bulletin board hangs on the wall of each
laboratory. On this the teacher posts the
month's contract in outline for each grade and
the weekly contract, in such form that the av-
erage pupil can take it and go ahead with his
work. Each pupil has a contract card. There
are different colors for different grades, so that
an individual is easily placed in the laboratory.

The card is divided into vertical columns, one
for each subject the pupil is studying. It is
ruled in four rows, each indicating an amount
corresponding to a week's work on the contract,
i.e^ a square on the card then represents one
week's work in a subject. These squares are
subdivided into five rows, each row represent-
ing one day's work in the subject. Our fifth-
grade pupil starts a new month of work by go-

24 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

ing to his geography room. He copies the out-
line of the month's assignment on the back of
his card. He studies the week's assignment
until he understands it, and determines what his
first step should be. He may become absorbed
in his work and remain in the geography labor-
atory for several hours. He has, of course,
done more than one-fifth of the week's assign-
ment in geography before he leaves. When he
is ready to leave, he goes over what he has done
and decides that he has finished say, three-fifths
of the assignment. In the geography column on
his card, he will draw a vertical line which
covers the first three subdivisions of the square
for the first week. In the next subject labora-
tory he goes to, he will follow the same proce-
dure, crossing off the proportion of the week's
work that he accomplishes in each subject. In
order to keep track of which records are made
each day, the number 1, 2 or 3, etc., correspond-
ing to the day of the week is written on each
day's line.

When the expression "time for a contract"
is used, it should be noted that this does not
mean so many minutes allowed for each day's
work. It means the amount of work done at

THE LABORATORY 25

any one time on the week's assignment on the
basis of a rough division of that assignment
into five parts.

A pupil is not allowed to start a new contract
in any one subject until he has finished all the
subjects of the contract of the month before.
This means that he must plan his distribution
of time. A heedless child who follows his im-
pulses may easily find the first month or two of
a free program difficult. He will go to the lab-
oratory of the subject which interests him most
or which he finds easiest. Those portions of his
contracts finished, he finds his difficult subjects
still before him. Time will go slowly. He will
be doubly conscious of his difficulties and he
may spend more time than he ought in the shops
or in reading in the library. The end of the
month arrives and the rest of his class are start-
ing interesting new assignments. He can not
go on, because his difficult subject is not fin-
ished. With a real effort he gets down to work
and finally completes the contract to the
teacher's satisfaction. The next month he re-
members his experience and plans his time bet-
ter. He will start his history early in the
month, do a little of it each day, and save some

26 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

of the easy or more interesting work to give
him mental rest and stimulation all through the
month. Gradually, he will work out an arrange-
ment of his time that is coordinated with his
mental habits.

Barely a pupil will be found whose habits
and sense of responsibility are so poor that he
will fail completely in organizing his time to
complete his contracts. For such a pupil, it is
a simple matter to make a program that re-
quires him to report in certain laboratories at
certain periods. Seeing his fellow-pupils work-
ing independently, the normal child will be
stimulated to prove to his teachers that such
special supervision is unnecessary, and after a
few months, during which his program is
adapted to his progress, he will be able to work
as the others do. But this device should not be
used, unless it seems necessary.

The lessons learned in having to plan his
own time are as necessary to a child's education
as the multiplication table or a legible hand-
writing. Ability to fit a definite job into a
definite time, to plan a coming day, and to im-
prove in the ability to organize one's work are
large factors in adult success. Like all habits,

THE LABORATORY 27

they can not be established without practice.
Miss Parkhurst believes that a child of nine or
ten has enough experience to be ready to take
the responsibility for his own school life to this
extent. Modern education lays emphasis on the
necessity for training that develops initiative,
organizing ability, resourcefulness and critical
judgment. The average class-room methods
furnish comparatively few opportunities for the
exercise of these qualities. In the old-fashioned
class, they had almost no scope. Every school
that preserves the single text-book, the daily
lesson and recitations to measure information
must rely on more or less artificial devices to
develop them. Where pupils are free to organ-
ize their own time, these qualities can func-
tion as they do in real life. No matter how
rigid the standards or how routine the task
in life outside of school, responsibility for both
accomplishment and method is on the indi-
vidual. In a Dalton school, each pupil works
and plays as a self-directed, self -disciplined in-
dividual, as he must do outside of school. The
record cards are necessary to enable the inex-
perienced person to keep track of his work.
They give him a picture of his work in such a

28 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

concrete form that he can check, plan and eval-
uate from day to day and from month to month.

The contract card reproduced here shows the
way one pupil planned his assignments for a
month.

A record-keeping device is also necessary for
the teacher in charge of each laboratory. The
teacher should guard against all temptation to
require pupils to write out and hand in every
step in their contract. Too much writing means
that the child is not putting enough time on his
studying. It becomes a burden to the pupil and
defeats the chief advantage of the plan in tak-
ing away his self-reliance. The teacher should
also recognize that written work is not a test of
daily progress in lessons. It is rather an invi-
tation to the pupil to sit down with his text-book
and a piece of paper and transcribe notes to
hand in later as he reads. It can become the
emptiest of cramming processes. Miss Park-
hurst's suggestion is a laboratory form graph
from which the teacher can tell at any moment
just how much of a contract each pupil has
filled. A chart for each grade that is using the
laboratory is hung on the wall. There are ver-
tical columns for each week's assignment with

THE LABORATORY

29

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30 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

sub-divisions for each day. The children in a
grade are listed in the left margin. Each pupil
makes a horizontal line showing the amount he
has accomplished, whenever he leaves the room.
If the pupil is not sure what portion of the
week's work he has done during his stay in the
laboratory, he can consult the teacher. It is
usually not necessary to indicate on the week's
posted assignment the amount that constitutes
a day's work. Teachers and pupils divide a
piece of work in the same way, and the child's
instinct is to finish one of these divisions rather
than to keep his mind on the amount to be done
each day. It is a simple matter to indicate the
amount of time that would normally be neces-
sary for each portion for the first few weeks
under the plan.

From this graph any teacher can see at a
glance just how much each pupil has done on
a contract in any particular subject. She can
tell which children have reached about the same
point in their work. She can call this group
together for help and discussion and suggest
that they finish the contract, or do a certain
portion of it working together. The possibil-
ity of grouping children from a glance at the

THE LABORATORY

31

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chart is one of the chief advantages of this type
of record. With individual study, the teacher
must take and make every opportunity to stim-
ulate group work. This not only economizes
her time by allowing her to give help to a num-
ber of children at a time, but it enables the
children to get the benefits of social studying
and learning. The laboratory should not be
a place where children sit perfectly quiet. The
teacher need not be afraid pupils will copy each
other *s work. The greater interest that comes
from putting the responsibility for their own
work on the children minimizes this danger.
Each child also develops his own way of work-
ing and arranging his material, the one best
suited to his habits and ability, so that copying
becomes a difficult matter. When it does go on,
it can be as easily detected as it is under the
conventional methods of home-work assign-
ment.

By watching the graph, the teacher can tell
which children are ready to work together, and
can take time to explain problems to those who
are further behind with their contracts. It also
enables her to give help where it is most needed

THE LABORATORY 83

instead of being monopolized by the most ad-
vanced children whose ambition to finish a con-
tract makes them eager for help. It also re-
moves the temptation to keep track of pupils by
requiring endless written work, and the neces-
sity of keeping notes and asking questions in
order to know how the work is progressing. If
a teacher is in doubt as to an individual's abil-
ity to judge his own work or his desire to do so
honestly, she can require that pupil to speak to
her before he marks his progress on the graph.
If the responsibility for learning is not put con-
fidently and whole-heartedly on the children, the
teacher not only loses many of the pedagogic
advantages of the plan; she takes on herself an
almost intolerable burden of detailed super-
vision and note-taking. With children and
teachers cooperating to keep the room graph
accurately and conscientiously, the teacher need
undertake no more record keeping and paper
correcting than she does in the usual class-room.
The third type of record kept in Miss Park-
hurst's school is the laboratory score. This is
also a teachers ' record kept by the children. It
shows the amount of time on the basis of the

84 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

average that each child in a class takes to fill
his contracts. On this graph, the names are
entered at the bottom of vertical colimins on
a large sheet. Twenty horizontal rows repre-
sent the twenty days ' work in each contract. As
his work is accepted by the teacher, the pupil
marks his progress in the assignment by draw-
ing a vertical line covering the portion he has
done, just as he does on the laboratory graph.
If he works several hours in one morning and
does the entire week's assignment to the
teacher's satisfaction, he draws a line through
the first five squares in his column. If he com-
pletes his contract in the first fifteen days of
the school month, his line will have mounted to
the top of his column. Here each column is di-
vided into three spaces, one for the number of
days required for the contract, one for the num-
ber of days saved, and one for the number of
days lost. The pupil then marks 15 in the first
space and 5 in the second. If he had not fin-
ished until the third day of the next month, he
would put 23 in the first space and 3 in the
third.
At the end of the month, the teacher is able

THE LABORATORY

85

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36 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

to tell just how much time each pupil has saved
or lost on that contract. Since this chart is not
marked without her permission, she can judge
her assignments from it, whether they are too
hard or too easy for the class and just which
children got ahead or fell behind. By compar-
ing graphs from month to month, she can watch
the progress of each pupil in his ability to plan
his work and economize his time. The space
for recording time saved serves as stimulus to
children to work and arrange their time to the
best advantage. It also shows them their rate
of work, so that by comparing their records on
the graphs for different subjects they can see
where they can save time for their slow sub-
jects. Since pupils are not ordinarily allowed
to go ahead until they have finished their
contracts in all their subjects, there is no
danger of the charts encouraging poor or
too rapid work, and for the same reason it does
not promote any undesirable rivalry. From a
comparison of the charts for different subjects,
the teachers get an objective picture of the rate
of work of each pupil. They can tell which
children should be stimulated to undertake sup-

THE LABORATORY 37

plementary readings or extra topics, and which
children habitually have slow mental processes
and so should be spared unnecessary detail and
helped to get control of the minimum funda-
mentals of their studies.

The chart also furnishes a convenient machin-
ery for caring for the occasional pupil who for
some external reasons is behind other children
of his age in one or more of his subjects. As
long as he does not fall behind in the subjects
he is studying with his class, the rule against
starting a new contract before all the old as-
signments are finished can be set aside. If he
is a year behind in arithmetic, be can be en-
couraged to work hard and put in the time he
saves on other contracts in the arithmetic lab-
oratory. As soon as he finishes a contract in
arithmetic, he should start on the next month's
work. From the laboratory score, he can keep
track of the number of days he saves, and
measure his progress in overtaking the rest of
his class.

Two questions that naturally occur to the
experienced teacher in studying the plan with
a view to adopting it are the methods for check-

38 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

ing tlie acquisition of subject matter and for
preserving group work and social interaction.
It probably would not be wise to attempt the
plan with, the usual curriculum for children un-
der ten years old. By that time, the average
pupil has acquired a working knowledge of the
tools of learning, reading, writing and the four
fundamental processes of arithmetic. Progress
in reading comes easily with the pupils ' matur-
ing interest. As they move from simple text-
books and childish literature to those with more
complex language, their skill increases automat-
ically, if they have formed correct reading
habits in the beginning. This natural progress
can easily be tested by the use of the standard
reading scales in term examinations. These
scales have the advantages of showing a child's
skill in comparison with the standard for his
age all over the country and of diagnosing
the difficulty that is retarding a poor reader.
For the majority of the class who progress nor-
mally, there is a gain in time and in subject
matter in eliminating mechanical drill, and let-
ting this progress come from the reading that is
done for geography, history or English. The
poor reader's difficulty is detected by the test,

THE LABORATORY 39

and under the plan, the machinery already ex-
ists for giving him the individual attention and
drill necessary to overcome it. Granted a good
start in the mechanics of writing, there is
economy of time and greater interest in skill if
writing lessons are not continued in the upper
grades. High standards should be held before
the children, and opportunities given them to
check their performances with the standards
for their age. They should be required to write
legibly and quickly and prevented as far as
possible from forming two handwritings, one
for notes and one for the teacher. This can be
done by discouraging copying. Experimenta-
tion has shown this to be a more successful way
to teach writing than penmanship drills.

Investigation has proved that the best way to
teach spelling is by repeated practice in words
that are misspelled. This means individual
study. The standard spelling lists and tests
give the teacher the machinery for introducing
this method in a form that is scientific and has
been successfully used in many schools. We
have already seen that arithmetic is particu-
larly well suited to the free study plan. The
standard tests enable the teacher to measure

40 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

the individual's progress and to detect his weak-
nesses. On the basis of their results, the
teacher can assign individual drill in number
combinations that have not become automatic.
Such methods as graphs for spelling or multi-
plication combinations, word books and book
cards made by each child to keep track of his
progress in the mechanics of learning have
proved successful. All these methods require
individual initiative in the pupil, and assign-
ments and instruction from the teacher, and
are therefore well adapted to the laboratory
plan. These standard measurements do not fix
the mathematics or reading curriculum of the
school. They are a device for getting an accu-
rate measure of each individual's control of the
tools of learning : the mechanical skills that en-
able him to assimilate subject matter.

Checks on the acquisition of subject matter in
the rest of the curriculum should be worked out
by each teacher on the basis of her method and
the course of study. Schools where the plan is
used have determined certain principles which
should be followed. If the social features of
the plan are not kept in mind, the laboratory
method can degenerate into a speed device. Miss

THE LABORATORY 41

Parkhurst^s purpose was never to arrange a
school where the average pupil by isolated and
continuous attention to detailed lesson sheets
would be able to get through a fixed curricu-
lum in a minimum of time. Instead, she wished
a plan that would set up a socialized community
where real conditions for work prevail. The
freeing process for the individual is as essential
as is learning to read or write. Therefore, the
teacher should never resort to the device of
having children work on lesson sheets or follow
directions that are explicit in minute detail.
Her position as consulting expert in the labora-
tory gives her an opportunity to become famil-
iar with the mental traits and habits of work
of each of her children. She can not be fooled
about the grade of work any child is doing. The
ordinary term or monthly tests enable her to
check his grasp of facts and details.

Pupils should be free to move about, choose
their own seats, form groups, talk, use appar-
atus and materials ; do anything they deem nec-
essary for the best completion of their contract
as long as it does not interfere with the others
working in the room. Children can learn, as
adults learn, by working in a real laboratory,

42 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

by checking their ideas and progress against
their companions', by talking over difficult
points, by going to the dictionary or map imme-
diately, by comparing and combining the opin-
ions in their group, and by being free to work
alone when and as they need to. This type of
study develops, by requiring accurate work,
perseverance, critical judgment and initiative.
Where children are interested, their judgment
is sound. They reject the trivial; shut out of
their groups the mental hangers-on and the
lazy; and, because they are working with their
peers, stimulate each other to greater efforts.
Setting up conditions for this kind of work
helps the children get the kind of social train-
ing they need. By working freely with others,
they learn to adjust themselves to their environ-
ment. The teacher can organize the group
work by having the children who have reached
the same point in their assignment report to
her for help and discussion as a group, and by
giving special topics to small groups for re-
search and reports to the class.

Class meetings should be reorganized under
the plan as periods for discussion and group
projects instead of recitations. The teacher's

THE LABORATORY 43

knowledge of her pupils' general attainments
comes from her intimate contact during tlie free
study time. Her knowledge of their grasp of
facts comes through periodic tests and examina-
tions. The class hour is not needed to find out
whether last night's lessons have been studied,
but it is needed to give a general explanation
of the month's or week's assignment, to point
out difficulties and put facts in their proper
proportion, to give pupils a chance to express
themselves before the group. A teacher can
easily develop a general routine for these meet-
ings according to the number which occur each
week. If she has three recitations, one can be
devoted to a lecture, one to students' reports,
and one to written work or supervision of group
projects. If she has only two, both can be spent
in discussion and planning with the children.
The monthly tests will probably be given in class
time. If there is only one class meeting a week,
the important points and difficulties of the as-
signment should be thought out ahead of time,
and the period carefully planned to bring out
the continuity of the work. In every school,
there is an assembly, athletics and dramat-
ics, class meetings and entertainments. The

44 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

educational value of these activities should
be recognized. They should be, as far as pos-
sible, incorporated in the regular curriculum.
In adult life, art and recreation are the chief
mediums of social intercourse. Why should this
not be so in the school? They can be organized
so as to develop standards of taste, apprecia-
tion and social poise. In assembly, pupils can
tell their comrades about interesting assign-
ments or pieces of work they have done. They
can use the art principles they have learned for
making stage settings, and their music for giv-
ing pleasure to the rest of the school. The as-
sembly can become the social and intellectual
centre of the whole school, where standards are
set and school spirit developed. Student activ-
ities can be organized on a self-government
basis with teachers acting as advisors. All these
things should be done by the pupils in the same
way that they do daily lessons. Through them,
the school can give practice in all sorts of nec-
essary social qualities, and training for citizen-
ship and democracy.

CHAPTER in

The Assignments

Teachers have always recognized the impor-
tance of dividing the courses of study into suit-
able assignments. The pupiPs understanding
of the general thread of the subject depends
upon the skill used in making these sub-divi-
sions. But in practice, the connection between
this and the learning process has not been suf-
ficiently emphasized. In the average recitation
or oral lesson, the assignment is left until the
end of the period, and is hurriedly given as a
number of pages or problems the pupil must
find time to study before the next lesson. Little
time is spent in giving the class a general out-
line of the subject or explanation of the values
they are supposed to get from it. They are
plunged immediately into the details of facts,
dates or figures. They are too often left to
build up for themselves the general interprets-

45

46 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

tion of this material after the course is finished.
Modern psychology has shown that the mind
does not naturally work in this way. An idea,
a general conception comes first. Afterwards,
it is analyzed into the separate data that sub-
stantiate the general truth. The conventional
method of presenting school subjects by induc-
tion persists in the face of this psychological
discovery. This is enough to account for the
failure of public school graduates to apply what
they have learned in school to their lives after
they have left.

Through the monthly contracts, the Dalton
Laboratory Plan provides for the natural, the
deductive method of presenting subject matter.
The assignment for the month gives the general
idea. The weekly sub-divisions give the refer-
ences that enable the pupil to gather the data
that build up this central idea.

Another discovery of modern psychology is
the impossibility of effort without interest. De-
tails in themselves are uninteresting, but as
steps in the analysis of a stated problem, they
take on meaning and interest. If the task itself
is not interesting, the will to do must be enlisted
by some trick or device. Because the old-

THE ASSIGNMENTS 47

fashioned classification of subject matter did
not correspond to the workings of the mind, it
failed to be interesting or of itself to enlist
effort. The rewards and punishments involved
in the system of examinations, marks, promo-
tions and prizes were relied on to stimulate the
necessary effort.

The monthly assignment in stating one gen-
eral idea does much to put a school subject in
interesting form and so on its own face value to
arouse the pupil 's effort. In making an assign-
ment the pupil 's interests can be taken into con-
sideration. All children want to know. The
assignment tells them something they may know
and they are eager to learn.

The whole contract consists of a number of
assignments, each having to do with special
phases of a general topic. Any one assignment
should not be a formal statement of the number
of pages to be read in specified text and ref-
erence books. It should, instead, be in the na-
ture of a syllabus stated in an interesting way.
It points out the central idea, the ground to be
covered, difficult points to be noted and kept in
mind, questions to be answered, and last, spe-
cific lessons in the way of written or oral work

48 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

to be done. The teacher conceives the assign-
ment as a plan made for the pupil to use in
attacking the subject, instead of the usual out-
line for her to follow in conducting recitations.
In preparing these assignments, she attempts to
get at the solution of subject difficulties from
the standpoint of the learner. The problem is
set up. The pupil has his subject laboratory in
which to work out his solution. He must, there-
fore, be informed of the difficulties he will meet
and told what the teacher expects of him. The
teacher gives the inspiration by stating the
requirements so as to arouse the learner's curi-
osity, and by devising ways to facilitate his at-
tack. The use of thought-provoking questions
is helpful in accomplishing this.

Where a teacher is reorganizing her subject
without making any change in her usual course
of study, she must keep two points in mind in
blocking out her assignments. First, she should
keep rather closely to the monthly basis. The
course of study should be divided into a number
of equal parts corresponding to the number of
months in the school calendar allotted to it.
This is necessary in order to enable the student
to check his own progress and plan his time in

THE ASSIGNMENTS 40

each course in relation to all Ms other courses.
That is, if assignments are made simply on the
basis of topic division of the subject, one prob-
lem may require two weeks and the next six.
Even when this is clearly indicated, the result
would be confusion for the pupil where the
spirit of the plan, putting the responsibility on
the child, is followed. A child would have a
number of contracts, one for each subject, and
each might require a different time for its com-
pletion. If he is to finish each in the various
time limits, he would no longer be free to plan
his time according to his interests, staying in
one laboratory a whole morning when he be-
came absorbed ; nor would he be able to use his
past experience in planning his next contracts.
Instead, the tendency would be to reduce the
assignments to a daily basis, and to rely on
the teacher for direction in the distribution of
his time.

Besides the loss of training for the pupil, ir-
regular assignments would complicate adminis-
tration problems for the teachers. The labora-
tory score that enables teachers to getttogether
and measure the progress and rate of study of
each pupil would become meaningless, because

50 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

each assignment and each subject would be
measured in different units. Difficulties in mak-
ing individual adjustments would also be
greatly increased. The two occasions for this
are, usually, for the child who is behind in some
subjects and advanced in others, and the one
who through no mental handicap is behind
his grade for his age. For both these cases,
it is desirable to set aside the rule that no new
assignments can be started until all the previ-
ous month's work is completed, and to encour-
age the child to save as much time as possible,
starting new contracts in some or all his subjects
as soon as the old one is done to the teacher's
satisfaction. Unless all contracts and all sub-
jects are divided on an equal time basis, such
cases would cause confusion. Teachers would
have to spend endless time in consultation and
planning in order to prevent very uneven sub-
ject progress. Therefore, it is desirable to have
a uniform time unit for contracts. But in divid-
ing the course of study into months of work, the
necessity of having each contract an intellectual
whole must never be sacrificed.

Each contract should always be built up
around a central idea. In a subject like

THE ASSIGNMENTS 61

Latin, where the class is reading Caesar,
one problem may require the better part
of the year for completion. Here, contracts
are like mile posts. They mark progress in
a task where patience and continuity are es-
sential and each post is much like the last. The
first assignment in the fall should devote some
time to the historical setting for the Commen-
tary, the reasons for studying it, its interest
and value to the pupils, and types of new prob-
lems that must be met. After this, the con-
tracts for several months may properly follow
each other with little more differentiation than
the class progres-s in reading. This applies to
all subjects that are conventionally accepted as
drill. Even here, there is always an historical
background, new rules, or special pieces of re-
search and reports that can be planned as units
and to give greater content to the work.

Other subjects, where the year's work re-
quires the completion of a series of problems,
should be divided on the basis of time and topic.
In history, for example, a contract should not
stop in the middle of the Wars of the Eoses
because under the conventional study plan a
class would reach that point by the end of the

52 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

third month. A different arrangement of the
sub-topics in the problem should be made so
that, say, the pupil's textual study and map-
drawing is a unit, and his essay or supplemen-
tary reading can be made a week's unit in the
following contract. The problem will not prove
as difficult as it may appear if the teacher ap-
proaches it with the pedagogic advantages of
her new opportunity in mind.

The following contracts were used in a small
private school where the course of study is
adapted to the class of children. The fifth
grade was studying Greek history and the Eng-
lish class is advanced compared with the aver-
age eighth grade in a public school. At the
same time, the assignments furnish concrete il-
lustrations of the way a course of study can
be adapted to the plan; the methods the
teachers used to insure thorough study, enlist
the children's interest and bring out the central
topics. The contracts are portions taken from
the complete course, and so, naturally, it is the
thought of the specific point being studied that
is brought out.

In judging the pupil's ability to accomplish
these contracts, the reader should remember

THE ASSIGNMENTS 63

that the block of work has been discussed in a
class meeting, and that all the studying will be
done in the subject laboratory with the teacher
at hand to give help and criticize results, and
with a subject library and appropriate equip-
ment always available.

Greek History
Fifth Grade 4th Contract

First Week.

Last month we read how the Greeks fought
against the Persians and drove them out of
Greece. You remember the Battle of Marathon
and the Battle of Salamis. After the Persian
Wars were over, and the Persians had decided
that they could not conquer the Greeks, the
Greeks went back to their homes. You remem-
ber the Athenians had had their homes burned
by the Persians just before the Battle of Sala-
mis, so they had to start their city over again.

The Spartans were jealous of the Athenians,
so they did everything they could to keep the
Athenians from rebuilding their city. They
were afraid that the Athenians would become
the most important people in Greece. The
Athenians, however, succeeded in getting their
city rebuilt. They soon got into trouble with
the Spartans, who were very jealous still.
Finally, this trouble ended in a long and cruel

54 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

war between the two cities. This is what we
shall read about this week. Read the story
called Beginning of the Peloponnesian War in
*'The Story of the Greeks." This war was
called the Peloponnesian War, because Sparta
was in it and Sparta was in the part of Greece
called the Peloponnesus. When you have fin-
ished the reading, write out the answers to the
following questions:

1. Who fought in the Peloponnesian War!

2. Why did the two countries fight?

3. How did Pericles explain the eclipse of
the sun? (This is two days' work.)

We shall also read about the Death of Per-
icles, the great leader of the Athenians. Write
the answers to these questions when you have
finished ;

1. What caused the death of Pericles 1

2. What was said about the way Pericles
found the city and the way he left it? (This
is one day's work.)

The third story to read this week is called
Greek Colonies in Italy. You will find the page
by looking in the index. You ^\411 find out there
about some of the Greek cities in Italy and
SicUy. Look on the map in the front of the
book, and see where the cities are. You will
be interested to see how the people in some of
the cities loved comfort and luxury. You will
also find out about how the Athenians planned
a great expedition to attack some of the cities
in Sicily. Write the answers to the following
questions :

THE ASSIGNMENTS 88

1. Tell a story to show how the Sybarites
liked comfort.

2. Who were the leaders of the Athenian
fleet?

3. What was Alcibiades accused of? (This
is two days' work.)

BE SUKE TO BEING ALL YOUE WEITTEN ANSWEES
TO ME BEFOEE YOU MAEK UP YOUE WOEK.

Second Week.

This week let ns follow the fortunes of the
Athenian leader, Alcibiades. He was the best
one to lead the expedition, and without him the
fleet and army did not do much. Very few of
the men who started out with the fleet ever
reached home again. Let us read the story
called Alcibiades in Disgrace and the story
called The Death of Alcibiades in * * The Story
of the Greeks."

When you have finished the reading, and
think you know about Alcibiades, write out an-
swers to the following questions :

1. Tell how Alcibiades changed sides.

2. Why did he change?

3. How many times did he change?

4. Tell about the death of Alcibiades.

5. How did the Peleponnesian War end?

6. Who won?

BE SUEE TO BEING ALL YOUE WEITTEN ANSWEES
TO ME BEFOEE YOU MAEK UP YOUE WOEK

56 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

Third Week.

I wonder how many of yon have ever heard
of the Greek philosopher, Socrates. I wonder
how many of you know what a philosopher is
anyway. See if you can find out from your
reading this week. This we^ek we shall read
about the philosopher, Socrates, in a story
called that in the *' Story of the Greeks.'' We
shall also read two other stories about this same
man, one called The Accusation of Socrates, and
the other called The Death of Socrates. When
you have read all about him, write the answers
to the following questions :

(About the Philosopher Socrates)

1. What is a philosopher?

2. What did Socrates believe?

3. Tell about Socrates and Xanthippe.

(About the Accusation of Socrates)

4. How did the Athenians come to think
badly of Socrates?

(About the Death of Socrates)

5. What became of Socrates?

BE SUEE TO BEING ALL YOUE WRITTEN ANSWEES
TO ME BEFOEE YOU MAEK UP YOUE CAED

Fourth Week.

We have been reading about the wars that
the cities in Greece carried on among them-
selves, and we have seen how the Spartans de-
feated the Athenians in the great Peloponne-
sian war. Some of the Greeks were still anx-

THE ASSIGNMENTS 87

ions to fight, so when a war broke out between
two brothers who were trying to become King
of Persia, a large force of Greeks went to help
the younger brother, Cyrus. This week, we
shall read about the adventures of the Greeks
in Asia. The story to read is in the * * Story of
the Greeks" and is called The Defeat of Cyrus,
Then there is another story that comes right
after that one called The Retreat of the Ten
Thousand. Let us read that also. Then we
shall write answers to these questions :

1. Who was Cyrus fighting against?

2. Who helped him?

3. What happened to the Greek officers after
the defeat?

4. What did the Ten Thousand do?

5. Who led them?

6. Where did they go? (This work will be
equivalent to three days' work.)

We must go on, now, and see what came of
the help that the Greeks gave to the Persian
Cyrus. Artaxerxes, the brother who won out,
was naturally angry at the Greeks for helping
his brother, and so war broke out between the
Greeks in Asia Minor and the Persians. Let us
read about the Spartan King, Agesilaus, and
his battles with Persians. There are two
stories, one called Agesilaus in Asia and the
other called A Strange Interview. When you
have finished the reading, answer these ques-
tions :

1. What city was Agesilaus king of?

2. What kind of looking man was he?

58 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

3. When he met Pharnabazus what did Phar-
nabazus find him doing?

4. What did Pharnabazus do when he saw
the simplicity of Agesilaus?

SHOW ME TOUE ANSWERS BEFOEE YOU MAEK UP
YOUE CAED

American History

Seventh Grade 4th Contract

First Week.

This week there will be two topics to read
and study about. The first topic is A Wonder-
ful Invention. This invention was made while
Washington was president and was a very im-
portant one to industry in the United States.
Let us read about it in one of these two books :
** Story of the Great Eepublic," or ''Some Suc-
cessful Americans," page 147 and following:
When you have finished reading, write out full
answers to the following questions :

1. What was this invention?

2. Who was the inventor?

3. When was it invented?

4. Why was this invention so important?
The second topic is : The United States Buys

Land. You will find out about this topic in
* ' The Story of the Great Eepublic. ' ' When you
have read the story, write the answers to the
following questions:

THE ASSIGNMENTS 69

1. Who sold this land to the United States!

2. How much did we pay for it?

3. What President bought it?

4. Who explored this land?

5. What river in the West did they go down?

6. Who went to find the source of the Missis-
sippi?

7. What happened to him?

8. What did John Jacob Astor do?

9. Draw a map of the Louisiana Purchase.
(You will find a map to copy on page 210 of
Muzzey's ''American History.")

Second Week.

While Thomas Jefferson was President we
had a great deal of difficulty with pirates. Our
first topic this week will be about that trouble.
Eead ''The Story of the Great Republic," pages
61-68, and then write the answers to the follow-
ing questions :

1. Why did we fight pirates ?

2. WTiat did the Dey order Bainbridge to do?

3. Tell about Bainbridge and the Philadel-
phia.

4. Tell about the burning of the Philadelphia,

5. Tell about Richard Somers' brave deed.

6. What was the result of the fighting with
Tripoli?

The second topic for this week is : The First
Steamboat. Probably you know a good deal
about it, and that it was first made and run on
the Hudson River. Read The First Steamboat
in "The Story of the Great Republic" and write
the answers to these questions :

60 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

1. Tell the story of Aaron Burr.

2. Who invented the steamboat!

3. When was it invented?

4. Where did it run?

5. How has the steamboat developed since
then?

Third Week.

Our topics of study this week are all about
the War of 1812, our second war with Great
Britain. England insisted that she had the
right to stop any American vessels at any time
and search them for English sailors that might
be aboard. The Americans would not stand for
any such procedure, and after much disputing
we finally declared war on Great Britain in
1812.^ Our first topic is called The War of 1812
and is found in the ''Story of the Great Bf*^
public." Write the answers to these questions,
and show them to me before you mark up your
cards. This should always be done.

1. Tell about the fighting around Detroit.

2. Who were the American generals at De-
troit?

3. Tell about the Constitution and the
Guerriere.

4. Who was the captain of the Constitution.
The second topic is: "Don't give up the

Ship/' found in ''The Story of the Great Re-
public." Answer these questions:

1. Who said those words, "Don't give up the
ship"?

2. What American leader took the words for
his motto I

THE ASSIGNMENTS 61

3. In what battle?

4. Tell the story of the battle.

5. What was the ** American Army of Two*'?
Tell the story.

The third topic is The Star Spangled Banner,
Read about this in "The Story of the Great Ee-
public." Here are the questions about it.

1. Who wrote it? Where was he?

2. What were the British trying to do?

3. Who won the last battle of the war? Where
was it?

4. What was the result of the war?
Fourth Week.

We shall have two topics this last week. The
first one is Clinton's ''Big Ditch.'' Read in
*'The Story of the Great Republic" about it,
and then answer these questions :

1. What was the "Big Ditch"?

2. Who was Clinton?

3. Where did the ditch run?

4. What good was it and what good is it?

Our other topic this week is The First Rail-
road. The first real railroad in this country
was one very near here, the New York Central. I
am going to refer you to c small pamphlet pub-
lished by this railroad some years ago. I think
you will find it interesting, not only the reading
but also the pictures. Read it all, and when
you have finished come to me and talk over with
me what you have learned about this railroad.

62 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

Literature
Eighth Grade 4th Contract

This month we shall read a book by Kipling,
Captains Courageous. It is an exciting story of
the life of the brave fishermen on the Grand
Banks of Newfoundland. I am sure you will
like it. I am sure you will like Harvey and Dan
and all the others. When you get through read-
ing the story, instead of writing a book report
on it, write short stories on the following sub-
jects.

Bring the stories to me after you have done
them, and I will correct and approve them.

1. Suppose you were a reporter on the Glou-
cester Daily Herald. You hear about the ad-
venture of Harvey and Dan with the dead
Frenchman. Write this story up as an account
for a newspaper. Be sure to make it interest-
ing, for that is the most important thing about
a newspaper story.

2. Suppose you were Harvey on board the
"We're Here" after he had been there a month.
Write a letter home to your mother telling your
experiences during that time. Tell her just how
you feel, imagining all the time that you are
Harvey. I think you can easily imagine his
feelings as he writes.

THE ASSIGNMENTS 63

LiTEBATURE

Eighth Grade 5th Contract

Onr reading this month will be Roh Roy, by-
Sir Walter Scott. The reading will count as
three weeks ' work.

The fourth week's work will be to write a
book review of Roh Roy. This is different from
the book reports you have written before. This
review is the kind of thing you find in the Lit-
erary Digest. The purpose of these reviews
is to enable people to tell by reading the re-
views, whether or not they wish to read the
book. There are the things that should go into
a book review.

1. Put down the full title, and the name of
the author.

2. Put down the name of the publisher, and
the number of pages in the book, so that the
reader will know where to get it and how big
the book is.

3. Give a short account of the story, putting
in only the important facts.

4. Tell what you think of the book. Tell
whether you liked it or not, and why.

Bring your review to me when you have fin-
ished.

CHAPTER IV
A Dalton High School

Miss Paekhuest's organization plan was first
tried in a secondary school, in the town high
school in Dalton, Massachusetts. Before that,
it had been tried in an ungraded school and also
in a State graded school for a test period. The
Dalton High School had preserved the classical
traditions of the New England academies. The
town is a mill centre. The result was a serious
lack of adjustment between the lives of the pu-
pils and the school curriculum. There was no
reason why most of the young people could not
go to high school when they finished the gram-
mar school, if they realized the need for more
education. The high school curriculum devoted,
as it was, to college preparation under arbi-
trary conditions did little to make them see this
need,

Mr. Jackman, the school principal, realized the

64

A DALTON HIGH SCHOOL 65

situation. Because of New England conditions
and a conservative school board, he was unable
to make the town feel that a high school was a
stepping-stone to real vocational education in
colleges and special schools. Young people in a
factory town quite naturally will not spend four
years in preparation for training when that
preparation is wholly classical. Every year
the freshman class was large, but only a hand-
ful of pupils from the more well-to-do and am-
bitious families graduated.

The principal believed that education, not
mere college preparation, is the proper func-
tion of a public school. He was unable to
change his curriculum, but he saw in Miss Park-
hurst 's plan an opportunity to reorganize on a
basis that would enormously increase the edu-
cational value of his courses. He gained the
permission of the school authorities to try the
plan for part of the school day. A number of
school meetings were held to explain the plan
to parents and pupils. Finally, the conserva-
tive village promised a rather half-hearted co-
operation. The community was frankly sus-
picious. They accepted the conventional school
as a tradition. Its workings had never been

66 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

questioned nor its results examined. The busi-
ness of persuasion and explanation dragged
through the summer and fall of 1919. The date
for beginning the experiment had to be post-
poned until the opening of the second half of the
school year.

The adoption of the plan was so uncertain
that very little had been done in the way of
making detailed plans for the change. Miss
Parkhurst prepared a circular setting forth the
plan in briefest outline. The portions dealing
with the general purposes of the re-organiza-
tion are given here as they contain a statement
of the educational possibilities of the plan in a
high school where there is no attempt to alter
curriculum.

The ** Laboratory School" Plan*

Note: ** Laboratory," as here applied, desig-
nates academic workshops where boys and
girls discover their native faculties and needs
through real experiences relating to the world
they live in and where they acquire a thorough

* Parkhurst, Helen pph.

A DALTON HIGH SCHOOL 67

knowledge of the academic essentials as a mini-
mum.

''The plan lias to do with a simple and
economic reorganization of the High School,
whereby pupils and teachers function to better
advantage; by it, ineflficiency in pupils and
teachers is reduced to a minimum. It does not
add to or change the curriculum ; it does not de-
pend upon expensive school plants or elaborate
equipment; it precludes the idea that there is
any one method of teaching subjects, and ap-
proaches the matter from the standpoint of the
boy and girl problem. It provides equal oppor-
tunities for advancement to bright and slow pu-
pils alike, without sacrificing thoroughness; it
does away with program conflicts and will go
far towards doing away with 'repeaters.'

**The plan will change and grow with the dis-
coveries of the faculty and will contribute much
to educational advancement.

"Importance: A. An experiment which will
set for itself the solution of High School prob-
lems, and thereby lay a foundation for a useful
citizenship.

"B. In its demonstration it must be actuated
by sound principles of education, putting the
emphasis upon character development as a re-
quisite for citizenship, rather than upon acad-
emic accomplishment.

* ' C. An experiment which will serve as a so-
ciological laboratory for human development,
1.6., where the needs of boys and girls will be

68 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

studied, rather than a place where the foregone
conclusions of a group are applied to the boys
and girls ; a place where the experiences of boys
and girls, in a carefully prepared environment,
will permit them to arrive freely at conclusions ;
to bring about self-realization in the boys and
girls.

'^ Scope of Work: A school consisting of a
group of academic laboratories for each subject
taught in High School.

''Hours: The school day will be from 8:40
A. M. to 3 :15 P. M., including luncheon period ;
the time from 8 :10 A. M. to 11 :50 A. M. being
devoted to free academic laboratory work, and
the time from 1:15 P. M. to 3:15 P. M. being
devoted to regular classes.

"Aim of the Work: To have the pupils indi-
vidually graded in ungraded groups in their
progress through a graded curriculum ; to teach
the children to study; to create conditions fav-
orable to arousing the initiative, interest and
personal motives of the pupils ; to create condi-
tions in the curriculum and administration
which shall make possible the desire to learn
under the impulses of self -initiative ; to permit
the individual pupil to progress through his
chosen graded curriculum as rapidly as his
mental ability allows ; to permit pupils to work
uninterrupted in the completion of the task in
order that they may have a proper valuation of
time; to develop a sense of personal responsi-
bility towards their education; to consider the
laboratory head as a guide and helper rather

A DALTON HIGH SCHOOL 69

than as an instructor or driver; to gain in
power to survey a subject; to cultivate a desire
to be well-informed and intelligent, rather than
to attain a passing mark; to regard education
as a pleasure and as a necessary adjunct to ad-
vancement.

"Plan of Assignment and Work: The school
year consists of ten months. The curriculum is
graded into Freshman, Sophomore, Junior and
Senior requirements. A year's assignment in
any one subject covering the work of any one
class is divided into ten portions of work. When
the pupils enter school, they are given curricu-
lum cards corresponding to their rating in the
school. The curriculum cards for each class are
of a different color, and on them are printed
the first month's assignments in the four funda-
mental subjects carried. For instance, a Fresh-
man holds a blue card on which he finds as-
signments in mathematics, English, history,
etc. ; a Sophomore holds a yellow card, etc. Li
order that the card may not be too cumbersome,
the assignments are general and relate to more
detailed assignments exhibited in each subject
laboratory. Each detailed assignment is sub-
divided into four weeks.

''The time from 8:40 to 11:50 is at the dis-
position of each student. Each has a curricu-
lum card giving assignments of work which can
be covered in a school month of 20 days. This
monthly assignment is divided into weeks, but
the boys and girls have the entire responsibility
of dividing the weekly assignments into days.

70 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

He may either concentrate upon one subject,
complete the month's assignment in that sub-
ject and take a test, or he may study each sub-
ject a short time each day and take all of his
examinations at one time. Each pupil must
complete the requirements of the first month
on the first card, before receiving the second
card of assignments in his graded curriculum,
i.e., the exception to this rule will be made at
the discretion of the faculty for the good of in-
dividuals under consideration.

**0n a card especially designed for the pur-
pose, each pupil makes a graph of his daily
progress, showing the amount of work covered
in each subject during the 20-day period, i.e.,
the school month. The plan, as tested to date,
shows that the children are much interested in
their progress, and that they elect to begin with
the most difficult subjects rather than the easier
ones; that when left to dispose of their own
time they accomplish more because they advance
at their own individual rate of progress; that
the children are keenly interested in the prog-
ress of their companions and have much in com-
mon to discuss; that the 20-day assignment is
often covered in 15 days ; and sometimes in 10
days, giving more time for research."

On this basis, the teachers started the plan.
Half the year's work had already been done.
The teachers of each department made out in
general terms a schedule of their courses for

A DALTON HIGH SCHOOL 71

the remainder of the year. This was divided
into five portions, each representing the stand-
ard amount to be done in one month. The record
cards and graphs used were those described
above, altered to fit the particular subjects
studied in the school. The afternoon session
had a fixed program. The pupils met their
teachers in regular class periods. There were,
naturally, fewer recitations a week in each sub-
ject than when the whole day is devoted to
classes. This made some alteration in the con-
duct of recitations necessary. But no set way
of solving the problem was suggested. Each
teacher was free to make the adjustment that
seemed to her the best to meet the require-
ments of her subject matter. The teacher's func-
tion in the free study time is fivefold: (1) to
preserve an atmosphere of study in the room;
(2) to explain any detail of the assignment; (3)
to give information in regard to the use of de-
partmental equipment; (4) to give suggestions
in regard to methods of attacking particular
problems; and (5) when the need actually
arises, to give full explanation of a point and
of its relation to the general principle of the
subject.

72 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

Presence in school was attested by means of
a time sheet posted near the school entrance.
On this sheet the student checked up his advent,
and, if late, inserted in a special column the
time of his arrival. He was responsible to his
group advisor for explanation of either absence
or tardiness. The general honesty in the use
of this time sheet is an extremely encouraging
feature of the work.

Few changes were made in the arrangement
of the school building. The library books were
distributed to the appropriate laboratories so
as to be within reach at any time during the
free study. The history room was already fur-
nished with tables and chairs, but otherwise the
building is equipped with the usual screwed
down desks. A freer arrangement of furniture
is undoubtedly desirable under the plan, be-
cause of the necessity of encouraging the for-
mation of informal groups during study time.
But the Dalton High School has shown that
where such alterations are not feasible, the plan
can work satisfactorily under formal conditions.
Two or three pupils can group themselves
around one desk or a few extra chairs can be

A DALTON HIGH SCHOOL 73

placed in each room, so that pupils can retire
to a corner for a quiet conference.

The next year, 1920-1921, owing largely to
prejudice, the free study time was confined to
the first two hours in the morning. The rest of
the day was organized on the usual recitation
basis. But the plan of posting assignments by
the month and week continued, and pupils were
permitted to portion their study time quite
freely, progressing as they chose in the different
subjects within the limits of the month's con-
tract. This apparently slight change in the
school program effected a complete reorganiza-
tion in the school as far as spirit, attitude and
habits of study were concerned.

In one year, under the new plan, the student
body learned the lesson it never got from
the old school — that high school is a prepara-
tion for vocational training. Every mem-
ber of the graduating class made plans
to go to a higher school. Under the old
plan few pupils went. Mr. Jackman believes
that this is because the free study plan makes
the school life an active, not a passive, affair.
Children are no longer dragged and pushed
through an uninteresting four years. They have

74 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

to get their lessons on their own initiatives.
This means that they are more interested, plan
their time to better advantage, waste less time,
and remember what they learn better because
the contract gives continuity to the daily les-
sons. The pupils become partners in the busi-
ness of preparation for college. As partners,
they have a new sense of the importance of the
venture and its value. Such gains in habits and
attitudes are none the less valuable because
they are somewhat intangible and incapable
of statement in objective or quantitative terms.
It is through practice in using character quali-
ties of responsibility, initiative and judgment
that sound people and good citizens develop.

Mr. Jackman has stated the disadvantages
and advantages of the plan, as he saw them at
the end of the first half year 's trial, in conserv-
ative and judicial terms that will ring true to
the ears of every teacher.* **"We started with
a compromise. Unfortunately, this broad, nat-
ural and altogether ingenious scheme could not
be carried into effect completely.

' * The forenoon only was devoted to the indi-

*Jackman, ED. — ^The Dalton Plan. The School Review: vol.
XXVIII. Nov. 1920, p. 688 ff.

A DALTON HIGH SCHOOL 75

vidnal work described. In the original plan pro-
posed by Miss Parkhurst, group consciousness
and creativeness were to be attained through the
organization of special groups, the interests of
which were to be developed through investiga-
tion of special phases of a subject. For instance,
in relation to English, debate, public speaking,
dramatics, and literary discussions were pro-
posed ; for history, discussions of political ques-
tions of the day, of the art of some particular
j)eriod and its meaning as related to the life of
that era; for science, practical demonstrations
of peculiar phenomena or of home-made scien-
tific apparatus ; for Latin, reports on translated
works, Roman government, or the nature of
Latin life as revealed in Pompeian excavations ;
for French, comparison of Parisian French
with phases of the Canadian dialects, or the
brining of some person to the group who could
tell of France as he saw it. Cut-and-dried reci-
tations were altogether to be dispensed with as
being forced and artificial.

**It was believed by the state inspector of
secondary schools, to whom the matter was re-
ferred, that a serious loss of systematic driU
would result from the omission of the conven-

76 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

tional recitation. Afternoon schedules of reci-
tations were put into operation — recitations
based upon the indicated median of class prog-
ress— and an earnest effort was made by the
teachers to hold the interest of a group of
students divided by varying rates of progress
to lessons drawn from class text-books. The
results of this attempt to weld together two
inharmonious systems were not altogether en-
couraging. Where some good results were
obtained, they followed methods similar to
those of Miss Parkhurst's original plan. Eng-
lish, history, and science, as well as mathe-
matics, drifted into conditions of promise. Lan-
guage study, especially French, began to give
trouble. This was partly remedied by giving
up a part of the precious forenoon time to drill
and memory work. At the end of the year,
students were being encouraged to choose the
group appropriate to their progress, and in-
telligent use of this principle of choice did much
to solve difficulties. It seems to be true, how-
ever, that, even though drill and memory work
may be necessary and may avert future disaster
from the student preparing for college, the souls
of Rome and of France are just as far away.

A DALTON HIGH SCHOOL 77

perhaps farther away, because of persistent ab-
sorption of the energies of students and teachers
of foreign languages.

**We are forced to admit that in this school,
at least, and probably in many others, the forced
and unnatural method of teaching modern lan-
guage— giving instruction solely to prepare for
college — is mischievous in the extreme. Had it
been possible suddenly to reform in this respect,
making the right atmosphere, for the language
and letting it develop like a natural organism.
Miss Parkhurst's system would have fitted the
subject, as a good glove fits the hand. The con-
clusion deduced from observation is that not the
plan, but the conditions under which we were
trying to use the plan were at fault. This con-
clusion is highly encouraging, for the instructors
know what must be striven for in the future.
Modern language, like any other subject, pre-
sents no insuperable difficulty. More than that,
the subject, properly approached, would per-
haps benefit to an unusual extent.

**No special training was given the teachers
in preparation for the change. The plan was
under consideration for some months previous
to its adoption, and they had ample opportunity

78 THE DALTON LABORATORY (PLAN

to comprehend its principles. It is true that they
made some mistakes, that of overloading the
monthly assignment with details being perhaps
the most serious. All report a new vision of
education and a desire for further progress in
the same line.

**Our observations and collected data lead to
interesting conclusions in regard to the students
of low intellect as well as to results with pupils
of high intelligence. In regard to the former,
the majority showed profit in thoroughness and
inspiration. The fact that the entering class
was not intellectually as strong as usual and
that the proportion of absolute failure was con-
siderably decreased seems to speak well for re-
sults. It is, of course, true that the system
increases the difficulty of adjustment for enter-
ing pupils, coming as they do from elementary
schools conducted under the conventional sys-
tem. Some of the higher pupils, notably girls
accustomed to attainment of rank through the
exercise of memory alone, suffered a reduction
of inspiration and apparent progress. Time
brought to many of them readjustment and some
understanding of values hitherto unknown, and
though, in some cases, the lost ground was re-

A DALTON HIGH SCHOOL 79

covered slowly, their increased self-reliance and
initiative seemed full compensation. A larger
proportion of boys of all grades of intellect than
of girls received immediate benefit. This may
be due to the greater general experience of the
average boy in exercising his creative faculties.

*'The advantages of the system are fairly evi-
dent. Unusually able students need no longer
be held back to fulfil the necessities of a rigid
schedule. Students of rather low ability will
be able to go on without the Damoclean threat
of withheld credit and will be able also to reap
full benefit of the instructor's assistance and
inspiration. Repeaters, that bugbear of the
program-devising principal, need no longer
exist. There need be no turning back, except
for proper reviews, and the self-conscious, dull
student is not forced periodically to regard him-
self as an intellectual failure.

"The problem of general discipline appears to
be solved. Even in the earliest weeks of our
work under the plan, the atmosphere of order
and quiet industry was truly remarkable. Under
the convenional hide-and-seek relations between
teacher and pupil, a single instance of disorder
was likely to spread like contagion throughout

80 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

the school. Under our plan, an attempt at dis-
order was bitterly resented by most of the
pupils affected by it and influenced no one be-
yond the immediate scene. The close contact in
departmental rooms between teacher and pupil
deepened the sympathetic insight of both and
largely prevented that friction between indi-
viduals which so often blights the fondest hopes
of the educational theorist in the concrete appli-
cation of his ideas.

"Since, under this plan, all teaching is done
strictly by departments, no teacher finds himself
obliged to force an interest in a subject to which
he is really indifferent in order that the subject
may be provided in the school curriculum. This
fact, coupled with the elimination of friction be-
tween teacher and pupil, means that the nervous
strain so destructive to the health and abilities
of the average instructor is eliminated.

' * Under this plan, the pupil slowly but surely
acquires the point of view of the great industrial
leaders in regard to time. No longer is the
period of youth a fund of time to be squandered
on useless diversions. He gradually gets the
idea that his time is his capital, to be spent, in-
deed, but to be spent systematically and judi-

A DALTON HIGH SCHOOL 81

ciously. His education becomes his vocation.
He catches his first full vision of responsibility
and, stimulated by the knowledge of powers re-
cently discovered, he learns not to shirk the
responsibility. He learns that a ranking system
at best is an extremely poor measure of educa-
tion, that the true measure lies in the increase
of his own consciousness of power.

**The teachers of French and Latin felt that
some gain in self-dependence had been made,
though they were not at all sure that the subject
had been better mastered. The teachers of
mathematics, English, history, and science re-
ported not only an advance in rank but a
broader group of fundamental principles, a
more practical attitude toward the subject, as
well as a sturdier independence of mind.''

An analysis of the teachers' grades for daily
work and examinations indicates that there was
no loss in scholastic attainment under the plan.
There is no break in the marks that would sug-
gest that a change of conditions had taken place
in the school. There is not even any noticeable
falling off for the first month under the plan, to
indicate a difficult period of readjustment.
Slight, insignificant fluctuations occur in indi-

82 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

viduaPs marks for the two semesters, but there
are no greater differences than would ordinarily
occur by chance and even the slight variation is
not uniformly higher or lower under the plan.
There is one exception to this — the marks for
mathematics which indicated a small, but uni-
form gain after the plan was introduced.

The description of the school at the end of the
first months under the Dalton Plan suggests the
kind of problems that must be met, and the way
this high school has approached them. There is
a real difference in the way the plan operates
for different subjects. Mathematics and science
fit into the new program with minimum read-
justment of methods on the part of the teacher.
Necessary explanation of principles can easily
be given in one or two class periods a week, and
students are distinctly the gainers from having
all the rest of their time free to handle concrete
material. The pupil's success in solving prob-
lems and with his experiments gives an adequate
basis for judging his acquisition of knowledge.

The chief difficulty seems to be in getting an
adequate check on the pupil's knowledge of
facts. Before considering this too serious, how-
ever, it should be remembered that the children

A DALTON HIGH SCHOOL 83

in the Dalton High School did not gain less con-
trol of the information side of their courses even
in the first term under the plan as judged by
their marks. The problem then seems to be for
each teacher to develop a new technique that
will give him the same confidence in his super-
vision of the learning process that has become
traditional under the old method of daily assign-
ments and recitations.

Modern languages have proved the most dif-
ficult subjects to readjust to laboratory condi-
tions. Mr. Jackman has pointed out that many
difficulties are inherent in our attitude towards
the teaching of modem languages. Dissatis-
faction with old methods is becoming more and
more common and the introduction of the free
study plan will do much to clarify these weak-
nesses. Meanwhile, the teacher has an oppor-
tunity to develop better methods of instruction
by trying new groupings of subject matter and
of students. The Dalton school reports the best
adjustment by using the free study time and
class periods as a device for working with small
groups. A flexible program is mapped out for
languages. Pupils are roughly classified accord-
ing to their knowledge and ability in the subject,

84 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

and small groups are assigned to the lab-
oratory for certain periods. The teacher works
with these pupils, making greater progress be-
cause the class is small and because each mem-
ber is at the same stage. Meetings of the whole
class are held to keep up group spirit and to pro-
mote a uniform standard. Pupils may also use
the laboratories during the free study periods
at times when they are not required to be there
for group work.

The Latin teacher has not had the difficulties
reported by the French and German depart-
ments. Latin is accepted as a dead language
and since no attempt is made to have pupils
speak or read it with real fluency, progress is
very little affected by oral practice. Since pupils
can have access to the teacher's expert assist-
ance during study time, she can require a higher
grade performance than is possible where all
preparation is done out of school. In this way,
it is possible to cover more ground during class
meeting and to spend less time on details of con-
struction and syntax. The pupil's mastery of
grammar is checked through his prose and
through written quizzes. The Latin teacher at
Dalton says that the pupils do more work be-

A DALTON HIGH SCHOOL 85

cause the assignments are posted by the month.
What is considered one-tenth of a year's work
in Latin under the traditional daily recitation
plan is done in less than a month with assign-
ments and free study time.

The history teacher has made a special effort
to adapt his methods to the new program. His
classes have three meetings a week instead of
the usual five. A large block of work is planned
for each month and the weekly assignment is
made a unit building up towards it. The class
meetings are made periods for discussion and
for giving continuity to the facts studied. The
first two are lectures giving outlines, important
points and some definite instruction in how to
study and what to look for in the coming lessons.
Free discussion is encouraged during these lec-
tures and questions are asked to bring out the
meaning of the assignments, never to test an
individuaPs memory of facts. The third period
is devoted to some type of questionnaire, to test
progress and insure the pupils doing their
work with sufficient thoroughness. Once a month,
this takes the form of a written examination
on the past month's assignment. At other times,
it is devoted to reports from groups of pupils

86 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

who have been asked to talk on special topics;
to detailed supervision of small groups that are
given special reference topics, and that work
together in different parts of the room, the
teacher devoting part of the hour to each group,
or to general discussions carefully planned to
bring out the pupil's information and grasp of
the subject.

Mr. Jackman believes that the introduction of
a plan for free study is but one step in the neces-
sary re-organization of the public high schools
of the country. This step promotes the forma-
tion of mental habits and character qualities
that are essential for good citizenship and a
happy, successful personal life; such qualities
as interest and industry, accuracy, critical judg-
ment, self-reliance, initiative, responsibility and
the development of personality through oppor-
tunities for the creative spirit to operate freely.

The organization plan Mr. Jackman is devel-
oping in his attempt to make secondary public
education meet the needs of modem life in a
democracy is threefold.

First is the re-organization of the program on
the basis of free studies and assignments. The
pedagogic and social reasons for this type of

A DALTON HIGH SCHOOL 87

organization have already been explained. Each
teacher has freedom to develop the laboratory
technique for his subject according to his own
skill and judgment. But they have agreed upon
the following machinery to insure the plans
operating in accordance with the accepted high
school curriculum and standards :

1. To indicate the year's work in monthly
assignments posted in rooms of department
in advance of month in which the respective
classes are working.

2. To find out by careful thought, the cen-
tral truth of each day's assignment and strive
to make the student build around that truth.

3. To find out the strength and weaknesses
of the individual pupil, and to keep in close
touch with that student's advisors.

4. To make a statement of the rank of the
student at the completion of each month's as-
signment, and immediately place such state-
ment (numerically indicated) on the perman-
ent office card, and (literally indicated) on the
monthly report card of the student.

5. To be able to present a report on any
individual student of department at faculty
meetings, at least once a week.

Second, there is the teacher's responsibility
as guide in preparing the pupils for their life
after they leave school. Our American public

88 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

schools are founded on the principle that every
child, regardless of his birth and environment,
has a right in his school life to the best the
nation can offer. Mr. Jackman believes that the
school should be run with the conscious purpose
of giving those pupils who lack home oppor-
tunities such advice and information that they
will be able to plan for professional training or
for entry into industry with intelligence and
ambition. To do this, the high school should
have instruction and subject matter that is
suited to the needs of citizenship and a school
environment that gives the child a real and com-
plete life. He believes that vocational guidance
in high schools in rural districts should be
broad. It is not their function to give technical
trade training, but to have a sufficiently flexible
and varied curriculum, so that all pupils can
get a general cultural background. Even in such
small high schools as the one at Dalton, he be-
lieves it is possible to have equipment and
teachers enough to make a rough division into
classical, scientific and commercial courses, with
some specialization in the last two years. The
Dalton school has succeeded in adjusting its cur-
riculum to the needs of the individual so well

A DALTON HIGH SCHOOL 89

with this informal departmentalization and the
free study plan that all of this year 's graduates
are planning for further training. This requires
a close relationship between teacher and pupil,
so that the daily social life of the school will be
on a high plane, and so that the vocational ad-
vice will be suited to the needs and abilities of
the individual.

The third essential in an education for citizen-
ship is student self-government. The use of the
building, social activities, all the extra cur-
riculum life of the school offer many oppor-
tunities for the development of leadership, and
for practice in initiative, self-control and group
responsibility. This should be recognized as a
real part of the school and organized so that the
pupil's experiences are of educational value to
them. This means that the faculty must share
in the student's social activities, giving their
interest and support, and advice when it is
needed.

In order to insure the teacher's daily partici-
pation in the student life of the school along
these lines the following statements of their
duties have been formulated:

90 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

Order

1. To protect all students of department
from annoyance.

2. To maintain respect for the instructors
through their position as friends and leaders.

3. To see that coming and going is immedi-
ate and orderly.

4. To see that furniture and books are prop-
erly used.

5. To loan books of department, keeping
record of the same, and, at proper times to
see that such books are restored to the de-
partment.

6. To help maintain a proper study hall.

Advice

1. To try to get on footing of friendship
with assigned student and with his parents.

2. To confer at least once a month with
assigned student's instructors.

3. To confer at least once each half year
with the assigned student in regard to his
work, his abilities, and his ambitions.

4. To see that the year group is organized
with proper officers, and that representations
in school council meetings is continuous and
effective.

^ 5. To audit accounts of the group organiza-
tion at definite periods and to be able to report

A DALTON HIGH SCHOOL 91

to principal on the same at least once a half
year.

6. To act as chaperon for social functions
of the group.

7. To act as group excuse officer, keeping
record of excuses, sending adequate notices to
parents, and giving the principal immediate
notice of unexcused absence or tardiness.

8. To check return of report cards from
parents within two weeks of issuance of such
cards, and to give principal immediate notice
of any losses.

Each teacher is assigned to some one phase
of the extra curriculum activities of the school.
This has proved especially satisfactory as a
method of building up a staff cooperating for
the best ideals and aims of the school. It has
also been of great practical value in freeing the
principal from the burden of clerical work and
detailed supervision that is too often his lot in
small country high schools. These tasks cease
to be onerous when divided among all the
teachers. The school has made the following
division of labor during the past year. It is
made on the basis of the number of interests
represented in the school, the number in the
faculty to share the work, and the particular
interest of each teacher.

92 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

Special Work

Physical interests and athletic training.
Dramatic interests.
Attendance record and report.
Musical interests, records and correspond-
ence.

Teachers ' library and catalogue files.
Finance of athletic association.

This account of the Dalton High School dur-
ing the past two years is not offered as a pre-
scription for all the ills of education. It is
given in such detail with the hope that the story
of what one school has done lo vitalize school
life and overcome the conditions that handicap
pupils and teachers in many of our rural high
schools may be a suggestion and inspiration to
other schools in meeting their particular prob-
lems. After a year and a half on the plan, the
Dalton High School has convinced itself of a
need of free organization, and in September,
1921, began operating in ways more nearly cor-
responding to Miss Parkhurst 's ideal than they
attempted in the beginning.

CHAPTER V

The Streatham County Secondaby School

The Streatham County Secondary School
under the London County Council has been re-
organizing on the Dalton Laboratory Plan since
June, 1920. The school is a large girls' public
high school, with competitive entrance examina-
tions and tuition. The students have the back-
ground or ambition to make them enter a clas-
sical and scientific school as a preparation for
higher technical training. Pupils who prove
unequal to keeping up in their work are
dropped. The student body is, therefore, a more
selected group than is usual in American high
schools. Girls may enter at ten years old, if
they pass the examinations, and may continue in
the school Tintil they are nineteen. College en-
trance examinations may not be tried before the
age of sixteen. Those who fail at this time re-
turn to school for another year. The school

93

94 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

makes its own curriculum, which is then sub-
mitted to the University of London for ap-
proval. The purpose of the school is prepara-
tion for the entrance examinations to this uni-
versity, so the latitude is in choice of texts, sup-
plementary work and in methods, rather than
in course of study.

The Streatham School follows the tradition of
the English secondary schools in accepting stu-
dent self-government as a matter of course.
Each pupil is a member of a form and of a
house. The form is the scholastic division, the
class the girl studies with. The house is the
social division. Girls are appointed to a house
by the head mistress when they enter the school
and they remain members of this house untU
they leave. The houses promote school spirit
and friendly discipline. The older girls in a
house are in the relation of sisters to the
younger ones and responsible for them. House
pride makes the girls look after the good name
of the school outside of class time. The houses
are responsible for order and manners in the
buildings, and for punctuality. They coach
games and inter-house matches. Shields are
awarded for averages in scholarship and ath-

STREATHAM COUNTY SCHOOL 95

letics and to the winner in contests in dramatics,
recitations and music. These are democratic
and valuable to the whole house because the
score is made on the basis of every member's
record instead of judging from contests between
the strongest girls in the different houses. The
houses have officers who are appointed by the
mistresses from lists made up by the house
members. The head mistress chooses the school
officers from these house officers.

The self-government body of the forms is the
school parliament. Representatives are elected
to it by each form. The forms suggest rules and
plans that must have a two-thirds majority to
be sent to the parliament for adoption. The
students take an active part in the conduct of
the school through this parliament. It can sug-
gest rules and changes on matters pertaining to
discipline, administration, the course of study
and the program. These are adopted or vetoed
at the discretion of the mistresses. The stu-
dents take charge of recording attendance and
of study halls. They collect home work and
supervise make-up work, and tend to nearly all
the details of class-room procedure and dis-
cipline. The parliament altered two of the

96 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

teachers* recommendations last year. It had
been decided that participation in house games
and afternoon recreation should be voluntary
instead of compulsory. The students were em-
phatic in thinking that it should remain com-
pulsory in order to insure every girl getting a
minimum of exercise. The faculty also thought
that cooking should be required for all the fifth-
term students. The parliament objected on the
ground that it was against school tradition and
interfered with the pupils ' liberty. Their advice
was followed, and ninety-five of the one hundred
and three girls in the fifth term elected cooking.
The pupils of the school have always had the
valuable experiences connected with managing
the social phases of their school life. The head
mistress felt that when these active, interested
girls went into the class-room they became pass-
sive, learning by rote without any vital use of
their own wills and intelligences. Too much em-
phasis was placed on the facts they learned, and
too little on the mental habits they acquired in
learning them. The class-room machinery made
it impossible to alter conditions to meet individ-
ual needs or special occasions to any extent.
Every girl in the class had to behave like every

STREATHAM COUNTY SCHOOL 97

other in her rate of study, in her reactions to
the lessons. In order to counteract the disad-
vantages of this way of learning for the girls
on whom they are most severe, that is, the rapid
brilliant worker and the slow or uneven pupil,
she devised a * ' natural method. * ' Special pupils
who needed to catch up in some one subject, or
who were ambitious to save time were given sup-
plementary lessons. They were promoted as
rapidly as they mastered the extra work to the
teachers * satisfaction.

But this method did not meet all the needs for
individual adjustments. The average students,
the majority of the school, were working under
the usual conditions of herd learning. The few
who were working by the natural method had
difficulties because the school machinery was not
arranged for them. They worked on their indi-
vidual courses of study in the study halls. They
were dependent on the help of whatever teacher
happened to be in the hall during their free
time. So few pupils were working on this plan
that they were easily confused and discouraged.
Although the plan benefited individual cases of
maladjustment, it was hard to administer, and

98 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

did little to change the spirit and habits of study
of the whole school.

The head mistress read in the Educational
Supplement of the Times a description of the
Dalton Laboratory Plan. In it, she recognized
the opportunity to give all her pupils the intel-
lectual advantages that come with individual
study. For the last month of the school year,
the classes that have taken the university exam-
inations work on a free program. They come to
school, but spend the day in studying, reading
and games, very much as they choose. The plan
was explained to them, and it was suggested that
they try it for the month. The aim was twofold ;
to give these older classes more worth-while ex-
periences than they sometimes got during this
month without interfering with their freedom;
and, if the experiment worked, to have a nucleus
of school leaders who understood the plan and
knew how to work under it to assist in a com-
plete re-organization.

The assignments for this trial month were
made more or less individual. Courses were
mapped out for students with subject weak-
nesses to help them get up to standard. Supple-
mentary assignments were given girls who

STREATHAM COUNTY SCHOOL 99

showed special aptitude or interest in a subject.
Others did assignments in reading, covering
about the ground they would have in any case,
except that they started with an organized plan
and had free access to their teachers. The
month's experiment was a great success. As-
signments were attacked with a new enthusiasm.
Students showed an eagerness to discover and
a thoroughness in study that is rare in the con-
ventional class-room. It was this awakened in-
terest and self-reliant attack that made the head
mistress decide to continue the re-organization
of the school the following year.

When school re-opened in the fall, the older
classes continued under the laboratory plan and
the forms down to twelve years old began on it.
At Christmas time, the eleven-year-old girls be-
gan their free programs, and in the early spring,
the youngest pupils, the ten-year-olds, began.
At present the entire school of over 700 girls are
working under the plan.

The students spend about the same time in
free study and in class as those in the Dalton
High School, instead of the maximum set as the
ideal by Miss Parkhurst. The arrangement of
time is different. Monday, Wednesday and Fri-

100 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

day mornings are set apart for individual study
and tutorial work. Tuesday and Thursday
mornings are spent in class work. The after-
noons are devoted to special subjects, cooking,
drawing, needle-work and recreation and games.
Only the very exceptional student can finish her
work in the free study time. The average girl
has to spend practically the same amount of
time on home work she would under the usual
school organization. The three types of records
recommended by Miss Parkhurst have not as yet
been used. Neither are the monthly assignments
divided into weekly portions. Instead, a detailed
syllabus for a month with the problems defi-
nitely specified and including many questions is
given the pupils. At the end of the month, a test
is given every class on the ground covered by
the syllabus. Each girl is expected to pass these
tests before she starts the syllabi for the next
month. The detailed questions set in these tests
are relied on to check the thoroughness of the
work.

Like the High School in Dalton, the Streatham
School re-organized with no idea of changing
curriculum or course of study. On the contrary,
the primary purpose of both schools is the prep-

STREATHAM COUNTY SCHOOL 101

aration of pupils for liigher professional train-
ing. And in England, as in America, the scope
of this preparation is exactly defined by the
higher schools. What both principals wanted
was a school set np in such a manner as to enable
their pupils to carry out this prescribed course
of study more efficiently and with greater profit
in the way of establishing mental habits and
developing personal qualities. Since both schools
have had at least the success they had before
in completing their course of study, and in en-
abling their pupils to pass into professional
schools, there is little doubt that the laboratory
machinery is fitted to do the work of the con-
ventionally organized school.

What besides this does it accomplish?

We have reviewed the values found by the
American principal. The English school reports
the same kind of gains. The students at
Streatham have more self-reliance now than
they had under the old plan. By removing the
artificial props of class discipline, daily recita-
tions, and minute assignments, the girls are
forced to stand on their own feet; and so to
develop self-reliance. They are no longer pas-
sive sponges for absorbing facts, but research

***' 1,111^^

102 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

workers, each investigating and experimenting
and doing hard work to complete their con-
tracts. The plan of having the subject library in
the laboratory has proved a great stimulus to in-
dependent work. The books are at hand, so they
are used and their use brings the students a new
interest and wider outlook on the subject. At
first, the pupils spoke with some surprise of
their interest in these supplementary and refer-
ence books. As they have grown accustomed to
the plan, they accept these libraries as oppor-
tunities to satisfy their developing curiosities.

The school is formulating a definite procedure
for the laboratory plan. The head mistress be-
lieves that a school should not expect to make
quite the usual progress in extent the first term
under the plan, but that this loss will be more
than compensated by a new thoroughness in
grasping subjects, and that after the first
months, the students will cover the usual ground
and keep their gains in intensive studying.

She also believes that the plan should not be
used as a time-saving device to shorten the time
spent in school except in rare instances. In-
stead, members of a class should be kept to-
gether. The assignments should cover the min-

STREATHAM COUNTY SCHOOL 103

imum fundamentals of the subject and supple-
mentary work be done according to the ability
of the individual pupil to save time on the mini-
mum month's work.

During the first few weeks on the plan, most
of the time of the classes was spent in general
preliminary work. It is necessary to teach pupils
who have habitually been dependent on the
direction and judgment of a teacher independent
habits of work. They must learn criteria for
good work, how to study, and how to check
their own work so it will not get sloppy. In
order to prevent pupils from stopping work at
the first difficulty or question and idly waiting
for a chance to consult the teacher, the classes
were taught to make notes of questions or to ask
a neighbor and go on working, until they can go
to the teacher with a whole block of work.

All the departments make careful plans for
keeping track of each pupil without requiring
too much written work. Group work is encour-
aged. If groups do not form naturally, teachers
make them by assigning girls at about the same
stage and rate of work to study together. A
general explanation is not made for one pupil
alone unless she is backward or the circum-

104 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

stances are unusual. Instead, other members of
the class that are in the laboratory are asked to
come to the desk at the same time, and the whole
group discuss the point. For help with details
or special questions, the pupil is sent to another
girl or group the teacher knows to be further
advanced. When a considerable amount of writ-
ten work is necessary, it is made less routine by
having pupils correct one another's papers or by
correcting by sample. The latter method is
especially satisfactory for papers answering
specific questions or dealing with concrete prob-
lem. Here the teacher selects the paper of a
pupil who expresses herself easily and clearly,
corrects it in detail and then posts it on the class
bulletin board. The rest of the class are held
responsible for correcting their papers from it.
Where adjustment to the new plan seems diffi-
cult, times can be set when only pupils of a cer-
tain class can get help. Others can come into
the room to study, but cannot ask for help. In
special cases with either a slow pupil or a dif-
ficult subject, a definite time can be assigned for
a short lesson with a small group. A twenty
minute lesson to a small group, all having the

STREATHAM COUNTY SCHOOL 105

same problems, is more satisfactory in straight-
ening out difficulties than a full lesson with a
large class. Many apparent difficulties are
avoided through the preparation given during
the regiilar class meetings. The head mistress
believes that the opportunities for discussion of
new topics or of difficulties, and for individual
reports are further reasons for keeping the
whole class more or less together.

Modern languages have proved the most dif-
ficult subjects to adjust to the new plan in the
Streatham School, as they have at Dalton. The
reasons have been the same; the need for oral
drill and the pupil's inability to detect his own
mistakes. Mathematics and science fitted in
with the fewest changes. A minimum of class
meetings are held for these subjects. In science,
they are largely taken up with cautions and in-
structions in how to work.

The head mistress has a few cautions to sug-
gest to new schools adopting the plan. A good
deal of time, especially at first, must be spent in
discussion of the system with pupils and in giv-
ing help in methods of work and in keeping up
to standard. The greatest difficulty lies in hav-

106 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

ing adequate information about each pupil when
the pupil unit per teacher is from one to two
hundred. Teachers should not allow pupils to
wait for help ; it wastes time ; is contrary to the
spirit of the plan, and when they stand and wait
near the teacher's desk, they overhear others'
difl&culties and may get confused or muddled.
With thoughtful attention to new problems as
they arise, she believes that difficulties will be no
greater than with the usual organization.

After twelve months on the plan, the school
finds its adjustment to difficulties is all in the
direction of Miss Parkhurst's original plan.
The monthly tests given on the completion of
each syllabus are no longer used. The three
types of graphs have been substituted as a bet-
ter method of keeping track of individual prog-
ress. The weekly graph is arranged by houses
instead of classes. More and more scope is
being allowed the girls for free work. As the
radical transformation of school habits and atti-
tudes brought about by the plan becomes evi-
dent, the teachers are accepting their responsi-
bility as educational pioneers and attempting to
develop the plan's fundamental pedagogical ad-

STREATHAM COUNTY SCHOOL 107

vantages as well as to get the students through
the syllabi. The school has become a demon-
stration for a new and better way to learn and
to build character. Visitors flock there, and
numbers of schools are adopting the plan.

CHAPTER VI

Opinions of Teachers and Pupils

The teachers and pupils of the Streatham
County Secondary School have answered a ques-
tionnaire on the first year's work under their
modification of the Dalton Laboratory Plan.
The teachers expressed opinions ranging from
warm support to unqualified disapproval. They
were asked about the effect of the plan on the
teaching of their own subjects, not for opinions
on its general educational value.

The conclusions reached by these teachers are
similar to those expressed by Mr. Jackman (see
Chapter IV) . The history and geography teach-
ers report the fewest difficulties in adapting the
plan. The language teachers were least satis-
fied with the results of the new way of working.
The mathematics and science teachers had to
make a minimum of changes in their way of
working and found the plan an improvement on
the whole.

108

OPINIONS OF TEACHERS AND PUPILS 109

Certain general points were rather uniformly
brought out by the teachers. The plan had been
adopted in modified form. The essential fea-
tures in the changes seem to be, for the teachers,
the fact that the assignments were given as com-
plete and detailed syllabi and that monthly tests
were used instead of term examinations, thus
isolating the month's work as a separate unit.
A number thought that this was bad for the
pupil's grasp of the whole subject, and for the
continuity of the year's course. Cramming for
the test tended to make the girls more conscious
of learning isolated facts. This test became the
standard of work. A number reported that they
made those tests as detailed and specific as pos-
sible in order to check up on the girls' thorough-
ness. This would suggest that the tendency to
cram might not be inherent in the plan, but per-
haps the result of the specific methods the teach-
ers have tried in adjusting to it. The monthly
tests have now been given up and these specific
difficulties have largely disappeared. Nearly all
the teachers agreed that the pupils tend to shirk
details more under the plan. The instructors,
however, pointed out that this is a natural fault
which must be met in any system.

110 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

The plan seems to have made several teachers
more conscious of the necessity for small classes
and adequate books and equipment. If the pupils
are to get the full benefits of their free study-
time, the pupil unit should be small enough so
that the teacher can become acquainted with
each girl and keep track of her work. The lab-
oratory must be well stocked with books and
materials so that pupils can carry on research
and reference work and find plenty of things to
do as well as books to read.

Some of the teachers ' discussions of the plan
are given. It should be noted that two teachers,
one in Latin and one in French, condemned the
plan as a whole; otherwise the examples are
typical.

**The Streatham scheme of study, which is
based on the Dalton Plan, has been in operation
less than a year so that all comparisons between
it and the former method of continuous class
teaching can be stated in only very tentative
terms. In Mathematics, the results seem to be
the same as they would normally have been.
There is practically no difference in ground cov-
ered or in standard attained. There is one point,
however, which the new plan emphasizes in a
way the old did not — the direct relation between
effort and result. This seems, perhaps, the

OPINIONS OF TEACHERS AND PUPILS 111

real 'hidden virtue' of the scheme. Indifferent
or mentally lazy girls can follow, more or less, a
well taught lesson and can then work straight-
forward examples fairly successfully without
any real effort. The results, such as they are,
are due to the mistress's energy and the pupils'
passivity. A distinct effort of concentration is
needed before the average girl can grasp a gen-
eral statement as expounded in a text-book, and
its application involves still further close atten-
tion. With few exceptions, unless a girl really
tries, she makes literally no progress under the
new plan.

' ' The organization of material in Mathematics
presents no new problems. So far, we have
worked on exactly the same General School
Syllabus that we used hitherto. In this, the
work to be covered in a year is stated and def-
inite points to be mastered allocated to the
different terms. Formerly, the mistress gave a
series of lessons with this program in view.
Now, the children also see the program and the
work is covered between lessons and free study
time.

"In Mathematics, I find my tendency is to
encourage the children very definitely to use
only certain specified text-books. It is a subject
in which 'method' is everything, especially to
youthful and elementary students. There are
comparatively few text-books which can be
trusted, and one might almost say the discrim-
ination of children as regards rival methods can
never be trusted.

112 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

**The fixed lesson periods I use mainly for
explanation of new material for the senior girls :
this practically means a lecture on a part of the
syllabus not yet done by them.

**A certain amount of discussion may take
place during a lesson, but the sets we teach are
too large, and in some cases not sufficiently of
one standard, for such discussion to be really
profitable.

' * The main difficulty in Mathematics is in in-
suring that the children use good methods in
working out exercises, whether in Algebra,
Arithmetic or Geometry. Formerly, most of the
work on these subjects was done under the mis-
tress's direct supervision. During the first
months, I found many of the children worked
out many more examples than they would for-
merly have done. This was to be encouraged.
They were provided with answer copies to avoid
waste of time in corrections. A child who did
one or two sums of a certain type and could not
get them right, at once came for help. The
theory was then explained and good methods
were emphasized, but the case of those who
achieved the correct answers was different.
Sometimes, a file would be handed in containing
a large number of sums with correct answers
but worked out by unmathematical or clumsy
methods — ^methods in which the pupil had be-
come expert. To avoid this, I set a month's
syllabus and divide the work to be handed in
into so much each week. Most children, espe-
cially those fairly good at the subject, do hand

OPINIONS OF TEACHERS AND PUPILS 113

in their file week by week, but to enforce this
would be merely to set weekly syllabi with an
almost definite time-table.''

**The girls have aU the advantages gained by
wide reading. The history library is in the sub-
ject room, and they come and borrow the books
suggested in the syllabus, or others they may
discover themselves.

** Under the old system, they had one outline
text-book and a bookof documents, and had little
opportunity in school of reading biography,
travels, etc.

"On the whole, more ground is covered in a
given time.

* * The lazy or weak children become more ob-
vious to the mistress. They can no longer
scrape through a terminal by memorising les-
sons, and are bound to attempt individual work.
After a preliminary failure, these children seem
to gain in power as time goes on. A very small
percentage (about six of the 150 girls I meet)
remain unsatisfactory.

*'It is easier to organize material, since many
aspects of a period, viz., social life, biography,
travels, can be gathered just as well from the
use of a library. Lesson periods can, therefore,
be devoted to arranging more difficult material
and putting people and events into their due
proportion.

''Given a suitable library, the children fre-
quently use ten or a dozen different books for
tiie month's work. Thus, they get different

114 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

points of view and fresh aspects of truth. This
widened outlook is apparent in their written
tests, which show an originality and freshness
seldom seen under the old system.

** There is one period per week set apart for a
history lesson in each form, but this period may
be devoted to study or discussion and a formal
lesson is not necessarily given each week. For
example, forms studying the geographical dis-
coveries of the sixteenth century, had one lesson
on the main directions of Portugese, Spanish,
English discoveries, etc. They read for them-
selves the lives and achievements of individual
discoverers.

''Under the old system, a mistress teaching
history deals with new material in a lesson, as-
sociating closely with acquired material and de-
veloping a sense of connection between events,
The memorising occurs at and follows the les-
son, and may be tested during the next lesson
period, usually in writing.

"Under the new system, the lesson material
is seldom new to all the class. Consequently,
the children have more to contribute, and wel-
come the chance of arranging satisfactorily
what they have gleaned for themselves.

"The tendency to be satisfied mth a too gen-
eral idea and to shirk details is always present
in children and is no more marked under the
new system than the old. There is just as
marked a tendency to get lost in a mass of
details.

"I try to meet these difficulties by careful

OPINIONS OF TEACHERS AND PUPILS 115

emphasis of important facts in lesson periods ;
by careful insistence upon the presence of def-
inite facts in written work done during the
month; and by putting questions to individual
children during tutorial periods, with the pur-
pose of ascertaining their grasp of essential
details.

*'The one lesson period per week is the only
time when I meet a class as a whole. Otherwise,
I see them as individuals when my room is open
for tutorial work. Then guidance is given in
reading, difficulties discussed, and written work
examined.

*'If the syllabus is carefully drawn up, the
lessons well arranged and the text-books satis-
factory, the difficulties encountered by the chil-
dren in this subject are not numerous and vary
with each child. There is little need for group
consultation.

''Difficulties peculiar to this subject are first,
the old one of reading without understanding,
and a tendency to copy written work, whole sen-
tences or phrases, from books.

*'I have endeavored to meet the situation by
setting written work which demands attention
to and selection from material used; by ques-
tions to individual children during tutorial
periods ; and by setting test questions which test
understanding as well as memory.

*'0n the whole, this subject gains enormously
from this new system of work.'*

"History and geography adapt themselves to

116 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

the scheme very well — the difficulties which arise
are not those of the scheme itself, but exterior
circumstances. The lack of material — ^maps,
books, is a real difficulty. The number of books
essential to have for use and reference makes
the scheme an expensive one — the brighter chil-
dren are constantly hampered for lack of more
material to work upon.

** Another difficulty is due to great numbers.
Exercises set on the work done are not carefully
thought out unless help is given in a previous
lesson. This would not occur if there were more
time to devote to fewer pupils. The monthly
test is regarded by the pupils as the standard
upon which their work is judged, and this entails
on their part a 'cramming' of a minimum of
material to reach this standard — ^not a desire to
work carefully at the subject for its own sake."

"The majority of my girls have decidedly in-
creased their powers of understanding about the
problems of plant growth and structure. Where
interest is sustained, the memory is kept in
order without appreciable effort. In each form,
we have some slackers who — if anything — do
worse under the Dalton plan. I attempt to
counter the evil by persistent attempts to arouse
interest. Given an initial interest which grips,
I find little difficulty in arousing attention to
details afterwards.

"In the upper forms, the lesson periods are
sometimes given over to lectures, sometimes to
class discussion, and of course new material is

OPINIONS OF TEACHEBS AND PUPILS 117

always explained. In the lower forms, the
periods are used for oral instruction with aid of
blackboard and hand specimens. The ground
covered is, as far as possible, in advance of the
private study scheme, i.e., precedes it by at least
a week, but there is some unavoidable overlap-
ping."

**I have found the result of our new plan in
Science to be as follows : keen and hard-working
girls often become more interested in the subject
than under the old system, as they enjoy finding
things out for themselves, and devising experi-
ments.

**In some cases, the girl of average intelli-
gence suddenly shows more interest in her work
on the new system, as she finds her own par-
ticular difficulties can be dealt with and this
encourages her.

**If, however, a girl of this mental calibre is
inclined to be lazy, she often wastes time at the
beginning of the month, and then towards the
end, makes a fruitless effort to complete the
syllabus by the end of the month.

* ' With few exceptions. I find that the girl with
little ability, especially if she is lazy, does not
do so well under the new system.

' ' The strain upon the teacher is undoubtedly
greater on this system, and instead of expending
her energies largely on the hard-working girls,
where it is likely to bear most fruit, she feels
impelled to expend a great deal on the lazy girls
who try to evade her, and who will probably

118 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

benefit little from her instruction. This danger
is one against which she needs to guard very
carefully.

''When we first adopted this system, I found
some difficulty in the organization of material.
I feel that this was largely because the system
was new to the pupils and to me.

' ' At first, I found that the syllabi which I set
were too long, and also that they, and the tests
which followed them, were not always expressed
in the most helpful way for the girls. The ma-
jority of the pupils also were awkward with
their new tools at first.

''The scheme is not altogether popular with
them now, but I do not think that this shows that
it is not the best thing for them. A great many
of them dislike it because it means more ar-
rangement and planning for them, than under
the old system, and they, through laziness, would
rather have this done for them.

' ' The pupils whom I take for Science have no
textbook.

"I give them one definite lesson per week, in
which I deal with the parts of the syllabus which
I consider will present difficulty to a girl work-
ing alone.

"I give the girls notes on important points,
and expect them to write up notes on all the new
work done in the lesson. They also write up
notes on the practical work which they do them-
selves.

"The pupils often get a more general grasp
of the subject under this system, and do not

OPINIONS OF TEACHERS AND PUPILS 119

regard the subject as a collection of isolated
facts as they are inclined to do, if they are given
formal lessons only on the subject.

**It should be remembered, however, that
"under the old system, we aimed at continuity in
our lessons.

*'I have observed a very great tendency to be
satisfied with too general ideas. I find that a
great number of the girls shirk not only details,
but also important points which offer difficulty
to them.

* * I try to combat it by the following methods :
Making the girls write up full notes on all the
work done; dealing with points, which have
offered difficulties to many girls in fixed lessons ;
making pupils deal with their individual diffi-
culties under my supervision in free study
periods.

* ' I use my fixed lesson periods for the follow-
ing:

1. Checking the pupils* observations
which they have made when working alone.

2. Discussing the results they have ob-
tained.

3. Dealing with matters which have pre-
sented general difficulty.

4. Helping the pupils to draw correct con-
clusions from the practical work which they
have done. For this questioning is used
largely.

5. Imparting new facts which the pupils
could not reasonably be expected to fiid out
themselves.

120 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

6. Encouraging them to connect this new
knowledge with their old, and if possible,
draw new deductions from this.

* * I have found these difficulties. Pupils do not
all work at the same rate in their free study
periods, and, therefore, it is sometimes difficult
to give a lesson suitable for all.

*'I have not found a really satisfactory solu-
tion to this problem. However, I try to over-
come it by paying special attention to the slow
and backward girls, when they are working in
the laboratory in their free study periods, in
order to raise them to the average level. I have
also found it advisable to give the quick girls
extra experiments to perform and problems to
solve on the part of the syllabus at which the
rest of the class are still working.

**I have found the large number of girls in
some of the science divisions rather a difficulty.
I am trying to overcome this by means of group
teaching in the free study periods, i.e., taking
all the girls in the division who require help in
one particular point together instead of sep-
arately. I find this very helpful indeed.

** Pupils are likely to try to carry out experi-
ments which are dangerous. To overcome this
difficulty, the pupils should be required to de-
scribe to the teacher the experiments which they
intend to carry out.'*

**The effect of the Dalton Scheme as applied
to the teaching of French varies, I find, with
the stage of the pupil.

OPINIONS OF TEACHERS AND PUPILS 121

**With the second year pupils, I have kept
to the prescribed textbook. Unless one is pre-
pared to abandon the direct method of teaching
French and to revert to translation methods,
the pupil cannot at this stage, break any new
ground for himself. His pace is, therefore, reg-
ulated by the amount that can be covered by the
teacher in recitation periods and his individual
work consists of consolidating that by exercises,
learning by heart, etc. Any attempts I have
made to let these young people break ground
for themselves in reading, grammar, or the
study of verbs have met with little success,
and have necessitated the difficult task of un-
learning.

**The weaker pupils are often content with
a vague general understanding of the matter
read. Surprisingly few questions were asked
about the text that was being studied, and these
usually just as to the meaning of a word. Many
of the girls seemed to be unable to pick out a
detail worth observing — the idiomatic use of a
word, for instance.

"To counteract a tendency to inaccuracy with
the younger ones, I tried the keeping of vocabu-
lary and verb notebooks. This was useful, but
required supervision, for which the time was
lacking.

** Class meetings were held as follows: Sec-
ond year pupils, three lessons of forty-five min-
utes ; fifth year pupils, two lessons of forty-five
minutes. For the younger pupils, the time was
almost entirely used in going over new material,

122 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

with some oral work. For tlie fifth year stu-
dents, the recitation hour was devoted one week,
to explanatory lectures and English-French
translation; the following week, to practice in
grammar work and discussion of subjects for
composition.

''Oral work is neglected. There is too little
time for it in the lessons. I quite failed to keep
a 'French atmosphere' in the laboratory.

"Especially with the younger pupils, there is
a tendency, when working away from the
teacher, to slip back into English sounds and
English forms of thought and to have continual
recourse to translation. I do not know whether
to attribute an epidemic of French dictionaries
amongst the second year girls to this or not."

The first question asked the pupils was : What
have been the advantages of the Dalton Plan
over the usual school system for you? A few
children said they had not been benefited at all,
in fact did not like the plan so well. The most
frequently mentioned advantage was the free
time table that enabled them to arrange their
day as they chose and especially to save time
on their strong subjects to put on their weak
ones. The next most frequently noted advan-
tage was the opportunity to get the teacher's
help in study time as they needed it. This they
said increased their interest and enabled them

OPINIONS OF TEACHERS AND PUPILS 123

to do more and better work. A number of
pupils said they did more reading because the
books were at hand. Many of them mentioned
their growth in self-reliance and independence.

The second question was: Is it harder or
easier for you to do your work than before?
Is there a difference between subjects and
teachers in this respect?

The majority of pupils reported that some
subjects were easier and some harder than be-
fore. Not enough instances were given, how-
ever, to discern whether these subjects were
the same for all the pupils. A few chil-
dren reported that all their studying was
easier, and a number that it was all harder,
but that they did it better. Several of the older
pupils said that there was a marked difference
in teachers in this respect.

The third question was: Do your lesson
periods help you in your free time or do you
sometimes feel there is not enough connection
between the two?

Most of the answers were in the affirmative.
The class meetings did give the necessary help
for the understanding of their syllabi, and
where it did not they could get the additional

124 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

assistance from the teachers in the free study
time. English seemed to be the one exception
to this. Some pupils said the connection be-
tween the class work and study was not always
clear.

The fourth question was: Is your general
grasp of the term's work in a subject increased
under the plan? Are you ever tempted to shirk
details or do you work more thoroughly?

The first part of the question was evidently
vague to the girls. The majority of the answers
were not definite enough to give any impression
of the pupils' idea of their grasp of the work.
The second part was answered with an ap-
parent contradiction in the great majority of
cases. They agreed with the teachers that they
were tempted to shirk details but added that
their work was more thoroughly done. The an-
swers of the more articulate children would in-
dicate that they meant an affirmative answer to
the first part of the question. Their interest
and general grasp of the subject was increased,
but they tended to slur over details for the
large thread.

The fifth question was: Have you lost in-
terest in any subject; have you lost your dis-

OPINIONS OF TEACHERS AND PUPILS 125

taste for any subject? The answers to this were
too varied to have any marked significance.
More pupils reported losing their former dis-
tastes, however, than losing interests. In view
of the teacher 's statement about French, one ir
teresting group of answers was found. A num-
ber of girls reported that they had lost their
distaste for French and almost none reported
liking it less than before. The following an-
swers can not be considered typical of the sev-
eral hundred received, as they are more explicit,
but they are given because they emphasize some
of the points made by many of the pupils.

**One learns more thoroughly, finding out
facts for oneself. Other than this, I do not
think there are any advantages.

"It is much harder to do the work, because

(a) you do not have so much help as before;

(b) you do not seem to have so much time as it
takes longer to do the work yourself.

**My lesson periods do help me in my free-
time work, because nearly always a difficulty is
explained. But, in English for instance, I do not
think there is enough connection between the
two.

**My general grasp of the term's work in a
subject has not increased under the plan. I
think I work more thoroughly, because more in-
terest is taken.

126 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

"I have not lost interest in any subject.
*'I do not like History so much under this
plan."

"I have gained in that I have been able to
pull up my weakest subject, although I have
sometimes found that I have let other subjects
slip for this special one. Also, I feel more self-
reliant, for example, with regard to home-work.

''Generally, I find it easier to do the work,
since I can take time to go over a thing till I
can understand it, but after, I find I am behind
when the examinations come.

*'My week's work in most cases depends en-
tirely upon the lessons given and those which
do not are given up to the explaining of our
difiiculties and since there are rarely more than
five at a lesson we find them most helpful.

*'I think that I get through just the same
amount of work, although in Math I do more
examples.

*'My general grasp of the subject has not
been increased.

*'I have lost interest in none of my subjects.

*'I have lost my distaste for one subject.'*

*'I can more thoroughly grasp the subject at
which I am working. It enables me to clean up
any difficult points by puzzling and solving them
myself. More time can be given a weaker
subject.

* ' I find my work easier in French, geography
and history, but harder in English.

OPINIONS OF TEACHERS AND PUPILS 127

** Lessons in most subjects are helpful.

**Tlie grasp of the work in the syllabus is
increased. There is not a sufficiently long time
of study to attempt to go into many details in
a subject. The work done is certainly done
more thoroughly.

**I have lost interest in drawing.

"Lost a little distaste for French."

"There is the advantage of being able to
carry on with one subject without being inter-
rupted by another lesson.

"It is harder in general, but I find geography
easier.

"On the whole the lessons do help with the
free-time work.

"In most subjects, my general grasp of them
is increased but in one or two, such as history,
it is not. In most cases, I work more thor-
oughly as it is interesting to find out the details
for oneself and when they are found I remem-
ber them better.

"No. Not very interested in history.

"Yes. French.''

"The advantage of the Dalton system is that
we learn the work by ourselves and obtain a
better grasp of a subject, also we have a whole
afternoon for games.

"It is easier to work than before, although
there seems more work to do.

"Lessons help a great deal in free-time work,
and I always feel there is some connection be-
tween the two.

128 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

"The general grasp in all slibjects is in-
creased, but in some subjects I am inclined to
sliirk, in other subjects I am a little more thor-
ough.

*'I have lost interest in one subject, geog-
raphy, but I have lost my distaste for two
subjects, geometry and French.*'

**The advantages of the system are more
time for working at weak subjects and oppor-
tunities for wider study of most interesting sub-
jects.

**It is easier in some subjects but harder in
the weakest subjects. Subjects and teachers
make a great difference.

* ' The lesson periods do help in the free-time
work. I always find enough connection between
the two.

*'My general grasp of a subject is not in-
creased. In subjects that I do not like, I am
tempted to shirk details, in some subjects I
work more thoroughly.

*'Yes, in Physics. Yes, I have lost my dis-
taste for French because I can do it better than
before.*'

**The Dalton plan has taught me to study
much more carefully and take a wide view of
things when reading. It has taught me to rely
more on myself and to glean knowledge from
more books than I did in the old system.

**I think this system makes the girls work
harder for themselves, especially in Mathe-

OPINIONS OF TEACHERS AND PUPILS 129

matics and Science (Physics, Chemistry and
Botany). But it is much easier to learn Eng-
lish, Geography and History. In my opinion,
there is no difference between subjects and
teachers.

*'The lesson periods help me very consider-
ably, especially in Mathematics.

*'My general grasp of the term's work is
much greater in Geography, History and French
and Physics.

* ' I think it makes one work much more thor-
oughly and not to shirk details.

*'I have not lost any interest in any subject
but rather increased it.

"I have lost my once-strong distaste for
Arithmetic and Algebra."

** There are not many advantages for me in
the Dalton plan. I prefer the usual plan, but
I think I have a better general grasp of the
term 's work than before, and I understand some
subjects, such as Mathematics, better.

* ' It is harder to do the work than before this
system.

**In languages, there is a difference between
teachers and subjects.

**The lesson periods help in History, Mathe-
matics and Chemistry, but in English they do
not help very much.

"At times, it is hard not to shirk details in
the work."

''One advantage I have discovered is that you
have to read more deeply to understand a thing,

130 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

and that you have to think more. You are able
to obtain more advice from mistresses.

"I find that some subjects are much easier
and others just a little harder. Yes, there is a
little difference between subjects and mistresses
in this respect.

**I find that the lesson periods are a great
help as regards my work in the free periods
and there is a large connection between the two.

* ' Under this plan I find that I grasp a subject
much firmer than under that of the old system ;
also I find that it is much more thorough under
this plan — sometimes after the exams I feel as
though I must slack.

' ' I find that in drawing I was much more in-
terested than I am now, but that is the only one.
In French and Mathematics I have lost my dis-
taste and have a firmer grasp on both. ' '

*'It has helped us to get on by ourselves and
will prepare us for the time when we go to col-
lege. It has trained us in self-reliance.

*'It is harder, sometimes, because if we can
not do a piece of work and there is no study
time, we have to wait for a lesson.

**The lesson periods help considerably.

**My grasp of the subjects is increased.

* * On the whole, I work more thoroughly, but
sometimes we think we will do it tomorrow, but
with the usual system it has to be done. ' '

**With the Dalton Plan, I feel we can learn
more thoroughly. Somehow, we seem to have

OPINIONS OF TEACHERS AND PUPILS 131

more time for learning, and we seem to concen-
trate more on our work.

"I think that on the whole it is easier for
me to do my work than before because the sub-
jects I find are most difficult I can do in school
and the easier ones I can do at home.

* * The lesson periods help me a great deal, be-
cause in the different lessons the syllabi are
explained and notes given which are sometimes
connected with and are part of the syllabi.

* ' I do not think that the general grasp of the
term's work is increased. I seem to learn the
work in one subject one month thoroughly and
then the next month with a new syllabus, I seem
to forget the first month's work.

*'I am inclined some months to shirk details.

"I have not lost interest in any of the sub-
jects.

''I have lost my distaste for one subject which
I used almost to hate."

*'The advantage of the Dalton Plan is more
work is done individually.

* ' It is harder for me to do the work now than
before.

**My lessons help me a great deal in my free
time work, although sometimes I feel that I
should like more lessons.

**My general grasp of the term's work is not
increased at all under the Dalton Plan. I am
often tempted to shirk the details.

"I have lost interest in three subjects.

**I have not lost distaste in any subject."

CHAPTER VII

The Childeen 's Univebsitt School

Two modifications of the Laboratory Plan
that have been used in large public secondary
schools have been described. The Children's
University School, a small private school in
New York City, is carrying out the plan in its
complete form. Here Miss Parkhurst has been
free to experiment with school organization to
meet the needs of child psychology and to
change the conventional curriculum according
to her conception of educational theory.

For the past two years, 1919-1920 and 1920-
1921, children from nine to fourteen years old,
those in the five upper grades have been work-
ing on a free program. The school has an eight
months' year and is in session from 8:45 to 4
o'clock. This is desirable especially in a big
city, if the school is to be a real community
where the children lead a complete life. "With

132

CHILDREN'S UNIVERSITY SCHOOL 133

the shorter day, every moment of school must
be taken up with academic subjects. The pupils
then go to other environments, other teachers
or schools for their recreation and for special
lessons, music, French, dancing or gjmnasium
and sports. Or they spend their afternoons in
city streets and parks where there are no op-
portunities for creative play and worth-while
experiences. Such varied and complicated pro-
grams are bad for growing children. It is im-
possible to make sure that the mental habits so
carefully fostered in the morning are not broken
down in the afternoon by teachers with differ-
ent methods and ideals. Too varied experiences
and a minutely supervised day lead to nervous
strain and premature sophistication in young
people. If the school day and environment are
arranged to give the child social activities and
valuable practical experiences, he can lead the
natural continuous life necessary to establish
right mental habits and good social adjust-
ments.

Miss Parkhurst's school has teacher special-
ists for the academic subjects and for music
and dancing, art, carpentry, gymnastics and
playground work. Academic work, including

134 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

science and art, is organized with free study
and assignments. Music and recreation come
at fixed hours in the afternoon, because this
work is social in character and depends on
group exercises and expression. The carpentry
work centers around a toy shop that is open
during certain hours, chiefly in the afternoon.
Pupils are free to work there at any time, but
blocks of required work are not mapped out as
contracts to be completed at a certain time.
Instead, the teacher helps individuals or groups
carry out plans she has suggested or approved.
At present, the school is working on the
schedule suggested for the Laboratory Plan in
Chapter L Pupils work in the subject labora-
tories on their contracts until noon. Then fol-
lows one hour of group work ; half an hour for
committee meetings, assembly, special confer-
ences or work on special projects, and half an
hour for a regular grade conference in a dif-
ferent subject each day. The noon recess is
from twelve to one, when a hot lunch is served
for pupils who can not go home. The afternoon
program for work in the studio and toy shop
and for athletics is on a free program. The art
conference, music and organized games come at

CHILDREN'S UNIVERSITY SCHOOL 135

fixed times on certain days. Class excursions to
parks, musenms, exhibitions or factories are
taken in the afternoon as they seem desirable
to supplement class studies. Classes and labor-
atories are managed wholly through the
teacher's intimate knowledge of each pupil, pos-
sible with small classes, and through the three
records described in Chapter 11.

It was suggested above that Miss Parkhurst
believes conditions of work for children are
more important than the particular set of facts
organized in a course of study for a school. She
says: **The curriculum should vary with the
needs of the pupils. Just what shall be put in
or left out will be a matter of prolonged debate
until the educational world awakes to the fact
that the curriculum is not the problem of chief
concern. Conditions are necessary which, if
understood, will remove the obstacles in the
learner's path and make him gratefully appre-
ciative of assistance given by teachers. The
conditions pupils live and work under are the
chief factor in any environment. The environ-
ment must create these conditions for soul
growth. They must be social and for the good
of society. There must be the give and take of

136 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

social intercourse, for it is the experience at-
tendant to the task, not the task or act in itself,
that occasions and furthers growth.

"What we desire is a community environ-
ment to supply experiences to free the native
impulses and interests of each individual of the
group. Any impediments in the way of native
impulses prevent the release of pupil energy. It
is not the creation of pupil energy, but its re-
lease and use that is the problem of education.

"The Laboratory Plan puts emphasis on the
way the child lives, the way he functions as a
member of society rather than on what he does
or the method used in doing a thing. The stim-
ulus and food for his growth is provided in his
community experiences. It is the sum total of
these experiences that determine his knowledge
and power. His energies are set free. He cor-
rects mistakes by discovering that he can not
obtain his self-set objective when there is a flaw
in his plan. He must make a new plan. He
finds it profitable to consult his fellow workers.
Their points of view clarify his ideas and his
procedure. The finished job takes on a halo
because it embodies all he has felt and lived.
This sort of studying is not pretending. It is

CHILDREN'S UNIVERSITY SCHOOL 137

being; not subjection but creation; it develops
initiative and versatility. School becomes ex-
perience. Each new opportunity and advan-
tage is justified if it provides experiences for
further development.'*

With this point of view toward education,
Miss Parkhurst did not concern herself with
subject matter changes during the first year and
a half of the school. Instead, she relied upon
the conditions of work to free the children's
abilities and establish right mental habits. The
free study time enables the pupils to work under
conditions such as prevail in the world outside
of school. They have to plan their own time;
work out their own problems; use reference
books and apparatus independently; adjust to
changing groups of fellow students. They are
free to work at their own rate of speed but have
to come up to certain minimum requirements.

Inexperienced children require guidance.
They must learn how to work. In the Children's
University School, the subject laboratories with
teacher specialists provide for this. They in-
sure a quiet, orderly place where the child can
concentrate, thus getting the necessary practice
in self-discipline. The teacher is there to help

138 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

with technique : to teach the proper methods for
using a dictionary, for adding a column of fig-
ures, drawing a map or using a plane.

A child must also get control of the funda-
mental tools of knowledge : reading, writing and
arithmetic, and a certain minimum of science,
geography and history ; to enable him to under-
stand the world he lives in. The monthly con-
tracts provide for this by fixing the general
field of investigation for the pupil. They also
insure continuity of work by demanding com-
pletion at a certain time. They lead the child
to new problems and higher standards and give
an environment with new experiences and in-
creasing complications.

Miss Parkhurst believes the conventional cur-
riculum can do all these things with the reor-
ganization of the conditions for work. Like
many progressive teachers, she also feels that
the complexity of modern civilization makes it
impossible to teach a child in his school life all
the facts he is going to need. This is the ex-
planation of her emphasis on the point that
curriculum, the selection of facts, is unimport-
ant compared with an opportunity for the child
to discover a method of attack upon any prob-

CHILDREN'S UNIVERSITY SCHOOL 139

lem ; for her interpretation of this is unlike that
of most teachers. Given the right conditions
for scientific method in working, practically any-
worth-while activity that interests a child has
educational value.

Spontaneous interests give a greater im-
petus to study and creativeness than set tasks.
It is still a mooted question just what experi-
ences and facts are most necessary for the best
education of children. It, therefore, seems a
legitimate experiment to be guided by the
child's interests and curiosities in setting
up his school environment, and so release
his personal qualities of initiative, interest
and effort for creation that is valuable to
him. It should be remembered that these
spontaneous interests are not undisciplined,
random impulses. They develop in the school
where the children are surrounded by an
atmosphere of work and study and under the
guidance of experienced teachers. Pupils had
been working on contracts in subject labora-
tories for twelve school months, and the teacher
was at hand to reject the merely trivial and to
correct gross errors in judgment. Therefore,
when the school was ready to begin changing

140 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

the curriculum, pupil interests, not adult analy-
ses of what a modem curriculum should be, were
allowed to guide the change.

Towards the end of a month in the spring of
1921, all the students were called together and
asked if they would like to have their next
month's contracts about something that each
was particularly interested in studying. They
were not asked to select a subject, arithmetic or
history, for a complete month's work, but to
list the five general topics they most wanted
to know about in the order of their preference.
Among the things listed were, law, flowers,
horses, boats, astronomy, plants, bridge-build-
ing and dancing. Instead of organizing these
interests into single courses of study for each
class, the experiment was tried of giving indi-
vidual contracts closely confined to the ex-
pressed interests. The girl who put dancing at
the head of her list was anxious to change as
soon as she was reminded that she would have
to work on it steadily all day for a month.
Children who chose closely allied topics like
flowers and plants were grouped and given the
same work. It was decided to let the child
who asked for horses work on the topic. She

CHILDREN'S UNIVERSITY SCHOOL 141

liad shown a passionate interest in them, hurry-
ing through her lessons to go to the studio to
draw or model horses and decorating all her
note books with sketches. A period of concen-
trated study seemed an opportunity to let her
work the interest through. Each teacher made
a subject assignment using material from the
chosen field and involving the particular skills
of her subject, arithmetic, reading or composi-
tion. The geography laboratory was made the
center for the pupiPs special research. The
teacher planned the assignments after discus-
sion with each child, so as to enable each to
follow out his particular interest.

The plan was tried frankly as an experiment.
It was not the intention to force the same topic
on a child month after month or plan the work
as if he were starting a period of specialization
or intensive technical training. No special
equipment was purchased. Instead, the child's
investigations were confined to books and mu-
seum trips where there was not suitable prac-
tical apparatus in the school. The method was
continued for the remaining two months of the
school year. The second month there were
fewer individual assignments.

142 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

The work of these two months so far can not
be called an experiment in the ** project
method.'* The subject assignments were not
worked out as unified projects but used the
topic interest to motivate the usual drill. The
children were therefore not really studying the
subject they had chosen. Instead, material was
taken from that subject to clothe the subject
assignments. The geography assignments gave
the pupils an opportunity to do enough special
reading to answer their original curiosities.

The experiment is still too new to be able to
plot its advantages and peculiar problems. The
teachers felt that the plan had increased the co-
operation between the departments; and that
the pupils ' interests were clarified and were led
to new subjects rather than towards more in-
tensive work on their first choice. The classes
made satisfactory progress in all the drill sub-
jects. The time taken for his contract by each
pupil was about the same as usual, but all the
children did more work. Motivation through
an individual interest seemed to give a new im-
petus to the pupils' effort and responsibility.
The teachers feel that the tendency of this ini-
tial stage is towards projects. The work in-

CHILDREN'S UNIVERSITY SCHOOL 143

volved for the teachers and the increase in
equipment necessary to enable individuals to
really study the subjects of their choice will, of
course, be very great. If the method does de-
velop into this, progress in the fundamental
skills should be measured by the standard tests.
This gives the teachers an objective basis for
suggestions and guidance to pupils, facilitates
the checking of the individual's progress, and
increases the value of the experiment as a dem-
onstration for other schools and teachers.

The month's contract for the group of chil-
dren who elected to study astronomy is given.
It shows how simple the first step in the tran-
sition to individualized assignments may be.
In geography the first week's assignment was
written by the teacher; the other assignments
were planned by the children.

Astronomy
assignment in geogbaphy

One Month

First Week.

I have a very interesting book for you to read
this month : * * The Book of the Stars. ' ' Let us

144 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

start with Chapter IX which tells about the
planets. The author calls the planets ''the
earth's brothers and sisters." I suppose he
would call the other stars the distant cousins
of the Earth. The countless stars that make up
the universe are cousins in the sense that all
mankind is one big family, while the eight
planets, including our earth, are the children of
the Sun.

1. What does solar system mean? What is a
planet? Why do we notice the movements of
the planets, while the other stars seem fixed in
the heavens? What are the asteroids? If you
look up the meaning of the word "astra" you
will know how the little blue flower got its
name.

2. Using a compass, copy the picture on page
35. List the eight planets in your book accord-
ing to size and according to distance from the
Sun. Find out by referring to a book on myth-
ology or to a dictionary what each planet's
name stands for.

3. Do you know that the Earth is really far-
ther away from the Sun in summer — that is
when we have summer in the northern hemi-
sphere, than in the winter? I think your book
explains the cause of the seasons very clearly
but it is sometimes hard to understand what we
do not see.

Another week we shall probably have our
Uranisphere in working order and then I shall
ask you to make a drawing of the Earth going
around the Sun.

CHILDREN'S UNIVERSITY SCHOOL 145

4. Why did astronomers think there should
be a planet between the first four planets, Mer-
cury, Venus, Earth and Mars, and the last four,
Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune! Using
a compass, draw eight circles around the Sun,
properly spaced of course, to show the orbits
of the eight planets. Don't forget to leave a
space for the asteroids.

5. Try to understand what is meant by ** den-
sity*' and *'mass" as the two words are used in
your book. Compare the weight of the lead ore
in the Museum with that of the iron ore. "Why
does the Earth pull the lead ore more than it
pulls the iron?

6. The rest of the chapter tells us how the
planets were born from their parent, the Sun.
"What do you mean by nebula? How is a nebula
different from a body like the Earth? If it
were of the same size as the Earth, would it
weigh more? If it weighed as much as the
Earth would it be of the same size!

Second Week.

We read ''Four Small Worlds" and wrote
a story about Mars. We wrote why we think
there are people on Mars.

Third Week.

We read ''What the Stars are Made of" and
* 'Restless Stars." ""What the Stars are Made
of" tells about the spectroscope. "Restless
Stars" tells us how we can teU whether the
stars are going towards us or away from us.

146 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

Fourth Week.

We read "The Color of the Stars" and ''Star
Clusters and Nebulae." We painted a picture
of the spectrum of Sirius. We also made this
assignment.

ASSIGNMENT IN MATHEMATICS

One Month

First Week.

Since you have chosen Astronomy for your
assignment this month, you will be interested in
finding out all you can about the sun, moon,
stars and earth.

1. We are told that the Sun is about 93,000,000
miles from the Earth and Venus is 2,300,000
miles from the Earth. How much nearer is
Venus than the Sun?

2. If the Earth moves around the Sun in 1
year, and Mercury moves around the Sun in 88
days, how many times will Mercury move
around the Sun while our Earth is moving
around the Sun once?

3. If Mercury is Vi7 as large as our Earth,
how many Mercuries would it take to make a
volume equal to that of our Earth?

4. It takes Saturn 29^ years to revolve
around the Sun. How much longer does it take
than for our Earth to move around the Sun?

5. The Earth in its annual journey around
the Sun moves about 68,000 miles an hour. How
far does it move in a day or 24 hours?

CHILDREN'S UNIVERSITY SCHOOL 147

6. The Snn is 93,000,000 miles from the Earth.
Light travels this distance in about 8 minutes.
How fast does light travel?

Second Week.

1. The planet Mars* year is 686 of our days.
How many of our years is it?

2. Venus ' year is 224 of our days. What part
of our year is it?

3. From the information I have already given
you in the first week, can you find how far our
Earth travels in one second!

4. Which of the following planets has the
greatest diameter?

Neptune 35,000 miles

Saturn 70,000 "

Jupiter 85,000 '*

Venus 7,700 "

Mercury 3,000 *'

(a) How much larger is the diameter of
Saturn than that of Venus ?

(b) How much larger is the diameter of
Venus than that of Mercury?

(c) How many times will the diameter of the
Sun, which is 865,000 miles, contain the diam-
eter of Mercury?

5. Come to me for some drill work.

Third Week.

1. A Siderial Day is the time it takes the
Earth to make one complete revolution on its
axis.

148 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

There are 366.24 siderial days in a year and
365.24 ordinary days. How many days differ-
ence would there be in 10 years, in 65 years, in
39 years? How many hours' difference, how
many minutes, and how many seconds?

2. If a clock is to keep siderial time, it must
be regulated to gain 24 hours a year. How
many minutes a day is this? How many
seconds a day is it?

3. In the ''Orion" group you will find Sirius.
To the South of it is Canopus, which is the most
brilliant star of Arge, the ship in which Jason
sailed away in search of the Golden Fleece. If
Canopus is 10,000 times more brilliant than the
Sun, and Sirius is 40 times more brilliant than
the Sun, How much lighter than Sirius is Can-
opus?

4. You will notice in ** Astronomy from a
Dipper" that the best months to study the
''Great Bear" are from January to July if you
look at them at 9 o'clock. If you look at 11
o'clock you can study them one month earlier.
During what month could you study them if
you look at them at 1 o'clock, at 3 o'clock?

5. Come to me for more drill.

Fourth Week.

1. What would be the distance from the Sun
of a planet which is 105 times as far away as
the Earth?

2. If it required 14 hours for light to pass
from the Sun to a planet at that distance, how
far would light travel in 1 minute?

CHILDREN'S UNIVERSITY SCHOOL 149

3. If Saturn in its year has 23,000 days and
nights, how many times as many as our earth
has it?

4. If Taurus is conspicuous in the Eastern
evening sky from September until the end of
December, how many days is it visible?

5. From January until May it may be seen
in the evening, high up in the sky, a little far-
ther West each evening, then it disappears.
How long is it before it disappears?

6. (a) If Mercury, which is nearest the Sun,
is 36 million miles away, how much nearer is it
than the Earth?

(b) Light travels from Mercury to us in
about 4 minutes. How far is that per minute?

7. How many years ago were recorded obser-
vations made of Mars if they were first made
in 272 B.C.?

ASSIGNMENT IN 6RAMMAB AND COMPOSITION

One Month
First Week.

Make lists of the words you have added to
your vocabulary from the reading of the story
of the * ' Winged Horses. ' ' Put the nouns in one
list, the adjectives in another, the adverbs in a
third list and the verbs in a fourth.

Imagine that after BeUerphon marries the
King's daughter, he tells her the story of his
slaying the Chimaera. Write the story as he
might have told it. Use the best words you can.
Make an outline first.

150 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

Second Week.

Dramatize the story of Perseus and Andro-
meda or imagine Perseus 's little grandson tell-
ing the story of his grandfather's exploits to
some of his friends. Write out the story as he
might tell it. You will find an outline helpful.

Third Week.

This week, let us make a study of some words
from your reading. Be sure that you know the
meanings. Then put all the nouns in one col-
umn, the verbs in another and the adjectives
and adverbs in two other columns. In order
that you may see how the word is used I have
put the number of the page on which each oc-
curs. (The list included 32 new words.)

Fourth Week.

If you have not dramatized one of the other
stories dramatize the story of Theseus and
Ariadne, or, beginning with the second para-
graph on page 188, '^The Stars and Their
Stories," write another ending for the story.
Make us see what you tell us.

ASSIGNMENT IN BEADING

One Month

First Week.

One of the books we shall use this month is
called ''Stars and Their Stories." You will
find some very interesting stories in it ; the pic-

CHILDREN'S UNIVERSITY SCHOOL 151

tures and the charts will help you understand
what you read, and help you find the stars too.

Read pages 3-40. Get a copy of Hawthorne 's
*' Wonder Book'* and read the whole story.
Find on page 7 the Latin name for **The Two
Bears"; on page 14 find four other names for
the "Great Bear"; on page 15 find another
name for the ''Little Dipper"; another name
for the North Star. What are the ' ' Pointers ' ' ?
If you can not find these constellations, get
somebody to help you.

What is the most exciting part of the story
of the Chimaera? Are there other parts of the
story almost as exciting? What other adjec-
tives besides ''exciting" might you use? Did
you like the way the story ended?

Make a list of the pages that have good de-
scriptions. Discuss them with me. If you were
an artist, could you make some good pictures
from the descriptions?

Did you understand Longfellow's poem "Pe-
gasus in Pound"?

Second Week.

Read pages 60-82 in "Stars and Their
Stories."

Do you think Perseus as brave as Bellero-
phon ? Make an outline of the story and learn
to tell it to your group. Use some of the new
words you have learned. Make your picture
clear. If you do not know how to make an out-
line, come to me. Tell the story to me before
you tell it to your group.

162 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

Third Week.

This week, you will read about three constel-
lations that belong to the Orion group. They
are: Orion, Sirius, and Taurus. Perhaps it
is not too late to find them in the sky. Winter
is the best time for seeing them. Look at the
charts and pictures on pages 84 and 85. Now
turn to page 97 ; what interesting facts do you
find about Betelgeuse and Rigel? On page 99,
you will find some interesting facts about Sirius
and Canopus.

Perhaps you have heard of the Pleiades, or of
the Seven Sisters. On pages 98 and 99 you will
read about them.

Now, read the story of Orion, pages 87-97, Is
the story as exciting as the story of Perseus t
Did the ending of the story please you?

On pages 100-101 there is something about
Astrology. Read it and talk it over with me.

Do you understand the poems on pages 101-
107?

Fourth Week.

This last week we have some wonderful
stories to read. You will find them in ** Stars
and Their Stories," pages 157-192.

Since I have given you questions about all
your other readings, I shall give no questions
about this assignment. I shall let you come to
me and show me what the reading has meant to
you.

CHILDREN'S UNIVERSITY SCHOOL 153

ASSIGNMENT IN HISTOBY

One Month

We are going to study the History of Astron-
omy by learning about the great astronomers
through the ages and what they did. Astron-
omy is probably the oldest science in the world
and was studied long before other sciences were
heard of. Some of the Greek philosophers that
we have read about were very learned in
Astronomy.

Let us keep a notebook on the History of
Astronomy. In this notebook let us enter the
names of the great astronomers, the dates when
they lived and what each one found out and
added to the knowledge that was already re-
corded on the subject. Let us have one page
for each great astronomer. Put his name at
the top and the dates when he lived. Then be-
low put down what the astronomer found out
about the Earth, the stars, the planets, etc. We
shall begin with the Greeks and come down to
the present time.

The book to use is called ** Stories of the
Great Astronomers.'* You wiU have to use the
table of contents and will have to read a good
deal of the book to find out all the names. (The
finding and writing about two astronomers will
be one day's work.) I suggest that you write
out what you find on paper first and show it to
me. Then we can make what changes are neces-

154 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

sary, before it is put into the notebook. Let ns
try to have our notebooks so neat and clear that
they will be very useful later as reference books
on astronomy. Perhaps you can draw plans
and pictures to illustrate the discoveries of the
astronomers.

CHAPTER VIII

The Need for an Improved Education

The Dalton Laboratory Plan is particularly-
significant at present, because parents and
teachers are feeling that children graduate
from our schools without the training and char-
acter qualities that are necessary for a success-
ful life. Many of them are doing something
about it. They, at least, give an analysis of the
failure of the present educational system to edu-
cate. Many who will not admit these analyses
admit the failure. They explain this failure
from their own temperamental slant on things.
The explanations are as numerous as tempera-
ments are numerous.

For some, schools fail because education is
not as it used to be. We coddle the child and
lap him in frills and fancies instead of devoting
ourselves to the four essentials: Reading,
"Writing, Arithmetic and the Big Stick. **If it

155

156 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

was good enough for me, it is good enough for
my children."

To others the trouble is that things are just
as they used to be. If their education was clas-
sical: ''What can you expect from a system
dominated by our colleges, where the classical
tradition largely prevails?"

If they worked hard and left school young:
"What can you expect in a country where laws
do not compel children to stay in school until
they have learned a useful trade?"

If they got good marks: ''Memory is the
only thing that counts. I happen to have an
excellent memory, so of course . . . etc."

If they got poor marks: "No attention is
paid to the individual. I was an exceptional
child, dreamy, always writing stories. No one
appreciated me."

Some teachers keep this strong, personal
slant on education. They are apt to start
schools from the fullness of their hearts. The
chief aim, often unconscious, is to avoid doing
to other children the things that were done to
them. The result is often an excellent school,
where little children are safe and happy. We
can not help wondering at the faith of the ini-

NEED FOR AN IMPROVED EDUCATION 157

tiator that what might have been good for her
will be good for all children. The correction of
a single misfit seems a limited basis for a thing
as complicated as bringing up children. But it
is a kindly human limitation after all. It makes
sure that the school will be interested in each
pupil.

Such schools are rather shocking to many
people because they present a new set of limi-
tations. But are they any less suited to the
business of education than most of our big suc-
cessful systems, public or private? How long
would a railroad last, if its president said: *'0h
yes, wooden cars are unsafe. But we can't
change them. All our cars are wooden"! There
is a principal of a school who says: "Yes, of
course we have outgrown the old ways, but we
can't change them. We must pin to them until
something is worked out to take their place.'*
Such modesty might be a virtue in a school girl,
but in the head of a school the kindest name that
can be given it is caution. Why not demand
that teachers themselves do a little of this work-
ing out, at least while we are waiting! A few
years ago there was a system where the super-
intendent boasted that by looking at his desk

158 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

clock he could tell what every child in town was
doing. But it was in one of his schools that a
pupil said : * ' Oh, mother, now I know what you
mean when you tell me to concentrate. I have
learned how. You know I don't like my new
teacher. Well, now she can talk all day and I
never hear a word she says.**

Before you laugh at the crazy ideas you
astutely discover in some of the so-called new
schools, suppose you make a list of some of the
ideas in the old ones. They are none the less
crazy because you have grown used to them.
The *'mere parent," can choose as well as the
educational expert. To help you sift the chaff
from the wheat, answer these questions. What
is education? What do my children do in
school? What is a lesson for? Do children
exist for lessons in this school, or is the school
for the children? If you have answered them
honestly, you are ready to choose between the
old and the new according to your lights.

Are there any general, impersonal facts that
stand out from this struggle between the old
and the new to convince us that our dissatisfac-
tion with schools is more than a tempest in a
tea-pot? Decidedly, yes. Three great factors

NEED FOR AN IMPROVED EDUCATION 159

in modern civilization require changing schools
if they are to survive. They have nothing to do
with educational theories. The man on the
street, the slum child, the farmer is more af-
fected by them than the university professor,
hence perhaps the slowness in changing schools.
They are the increase in scientific knowledge,
the resulting industrial system, and a demo-
cratic form of government.

The first has made specialization necessary.
It used to be possible for a single individual to
learn about all there was to know in his corner
of the world. All that was known could be
pretty well compressed in a few books. By
earnest and continuous reading it was possible
to master it. It was the sort of abstract and
speculative knowledge that could be grasped by
reading. The discovery of scientific laws has
revolutionized the world. Keep a child reading
and reading from the first grade through col-
lege, as we do, and he has only scratched the
surface of knowledge.

There are so many facts, and each individual
needs such a different set of facts, that it is
folly for schools to attempt to teach children all
the things they may need to know. But the

160 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

majority of schools are still doing this. And
the facts they teach are the sort that were popu-
lar in the middle ages ; the name of the highest
mountain in South America, and the names and
reigns of the kings of England. You are fond
of those facts because you learned them your-
self. But, honestly, how much do you think they
have to do with education? Did you get that
general understanding which is the foundation
of your intelligent attitude towards your job
and your life from them? How much did school
help you in acquiring it? Not very much, you
say, you got it from experience.

So schools are not experience, or at least their
curricula are not. They are magic doses from a
mediaeval prescription. They are the continu-
ation of a method unsuited to the subject-matter
of today. Suppose we tried to supply the
world's present demand for cloth by hand
looms. It would not be much more impossible
than trying to educate by teaching facts. Edu-
cation today must consist in learning to learn;
finding out about knowledge and what it is for,
so it can be acquired and used when it is needed.
This means that a child must know how to read.
Eeading is not merely pronouncing words ; it is

NEED FOR AN IMPROVED EDUCATION 161

using books. He must know how to write.
Writing is saying something, as well as guiding
a pen. He must know how to figure, not so that
he can tell the teacher when train A will meet
train B, but so that he can buy a loaf of bread,
or find out low long it will take him to walk the
five miles to the lake. It means, too, that he
must know something about his own physical
and social environment ; physics, chemistry, bi-
ology, fundamentals of industry, and social re-
lations both political and historical. He can not
get this by memorizing a few samples in a text-
book. What he can get is the knowledge that
such sciences exist; that they explain his own
world, the things he wears and eats and passes
in the streets, and the habits of his friends and
relations. He can get control of the intellectual
methods that have enabled society to pile up
this vast classification and explanation of things
and ideas. It is only as children, all children,
get this that the fruits of knowledge can serve
everyone.

Machines, and so the industrial system, are
the direct result of scientific discoveries. They
have multiplied the needs of man by supplying
them. They have infinitely complicated the proe-

162 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

ess of supplying them, taking manufacturing
out of homes and concentrating it in factories.
When it was carried on at home, children had
opportunities to supplement the magic facts of
text-books by real work. Processes were simple
so that they understood what they saw and what
they did. Compare, for instance, the educa-
tional value of the weaving industry as carried
on in a New England home and a visit to a
modern cotton factory. And how few children
today ever have a chance to visit a factory !

What does a child, today, have to give him
the understanding of his world that came from
helping in the endless activities that went on
in every home a hundred years ago? A little,
if he live on a farm; nothing whatever, if he
live in a city slum. But schools still go on as
if the old conditions prevailed. They have done
nothing to supply the real experiences that he
got out of school, when each home or community
was a self-supporting unit. The manual train-
ing and domestic science introduced in the up-
per grades of most schools are an obscure reali-
zation of the need. But much of their value
is lost, because work in the two subjects has

NEED FOR AN IMPROVED EDUCATION 163

been distorted into text-book form; into a list
of facts.

It is an educational axiom that children can
not know what they have never experienced.
Examine the curriculum of the average school
and then get the rest of the daily life of children
in a crowded city. There is almost nothing in
these children's experience to prepare them for
the world they will plunge into when they begin
earning a living.

But, you say, schools can not really be so un-
suited to the process of growing up. They have
been going on like this while men were dis-
covering scientific laws, inventing machines and
reorganizing society. What education such men
had they got in schools. This is not strictly
true. Leaders are not a typical product of edu-
cation under any conditions. A streak of genius
lifts them above the common run of men. They
find experience and turn it to account in things
at hand, no matter how meager their environ-
ment. Nevertheless, the majority of leaders
come from a social strata with a varied and
leisured environment. Not the least advantage
of being bom not poor is the opportunity it
offers for getting real experience in childhood.

164 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

The snccess of an edncational system should be
judged by the ability of people to live intelli-
gently who had no useful environment or ex-
perience except school ; not by the well being of
people whose daily life would have equipped
them with the tools of learning and the experi-
ence to understand their world without school.
Schools must be judged by such a standard,
if our ideas of social justice or democratic gov-
ernment are to be any more than an abstract
conception. Any democratic organisation of so-
ciety depends on the ability of every individual
to participate. The conception grew up because
of every man's sense of his own individuality.
It can succeed only to the extent that each man
or woman's individuality finds expression.
Educationally, individualism and democracy
are not opposed. They are the same thing. We
have not made good citizens when we have
taught every child to read and write and salute
the flag. That is not education, but a gilded
ignorance that leaves undeveloped leadership,
independence, and initiative, all the qualities
that are necessary in a democratic society. An
educated person is one who has had a chance
to learn as much as his natural capacity allows,

NEED FOR AN IMPROVED EDUCATION 165

and thinks honestly along the lines of his own
temperament and personality, understanding
his physical and social environment. Such char-
acters do not spring into existence with man-
hood. They develop gradually from the day the
individual is born. It is the schooPs business
to let them develop and to see that they develop
so that they are a constructive force in society,
not a dead weight or a destructive misfit.

What part does the Dalton Laboratory Plan
play in the reorganization of schools to meet
these needs ?

It offers a scheme for a material rearrange-
ment of schools that permits the powers and
abilities of the individual pupil to develop.
Therefore, it can be used as a device to enable
an old curriculum to function as efl&ciently as
possible or as a convenient organization for
radical departures from the conventional way.

Many educators, especially those in super-
visory and administrative positions, feel that
much can be done to eliminate misfits and waste
by adjusting so that the individual masters the
usual subjects as well and as rapidly as pos-
sible. This type of readjustment aims to meet
two criticisms of public schools : graduates have

166 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

not learned the common branches well enough
to succeed in simple business positions, and so
many years are spent on this part of education
that young men and women can not finish their
professional training early enough.

It is possible to use the Dalton Plan as a'
remedy for both these tendencies. It has been
pretty well established that individual study is
the best way to gain control of the tools of
knowledge. Drill in reading, spelling, composi-
tion and arithmetic, once right habits are estab-
lished, should be an individual matter where the
pupil works only on his difficulties. This method
can be used in the usual class-room, but the ad-
justment between the bright and slow pupils is
always a problem. With free study and assign-
ments this takes care of itself. The good speller
wastes no time repeating words he knows. He
reviews the assignment making sure he knows
the lessons and goes on with another subject.
The poor speller can take the necessary time to
really learn the words without feeling hurried
or tempted to hide behind the better pupils. It
is not suggested that the Laboratory Plan alone
is a permanent solution of this difficulty. The
discovery of better teaching methods and the

NEED FOR AN IMPROVED EDUCATION 167

most essential subject matter in the common
branches is equally necessary.

The second objection, that too much time is
spent in acquiring a half mastery of these tools,
requires even more searching investigation of
the essentials of education for its ultimate solu-
tion. But, meanwhile, the plan can be used as
a time-saving device where that seems desir-
able. It has been suggested that it would be
possible to use the laboratories and assignments
without trying to keep a class together. Where
the course of study is divided into monthly con-
tracts, a pupil could advance as rapidly as he
is able to do the work. A rapid worker can
often finish the contracts in all his studies in
less than four weeks. Instead of giving him
supplementary reading of special reports, he
could be given the contracts for the following
month's work, thus doing eleven or more
months* work in the ten months of the school
year. In this way, some pupils could save a
year or more of the time usually spent in pre-
paratory school. Some such use of the plan is
undoubtedly desirable in special cases where,
for some chance reason, a child is in a low grade
for his years or is behind in some one subject.

168 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

But it seems unwise to advocate adopting the
plan in this form for a whole school population.
Ignoring the problems of the social phases of
school life that would arise, administrative diffi-
culties would almost surely bring bad results.
If every child in a school were starting syllabi
of one-tenth of the year's curriculum at any
time he was ready for it, the courses of study
would have to be committed to paper down to
the last detail. The teacher would be so occu-
pied with examining, recording and starting new
assignments that she would have little oppor-
tunity for the real business of teaching. It
would be practically impossible to get group
reactions to courses of study, or to turn the at-
tention to anything but the machinery for ad-
vancing pupils through the prescribed syllabi.
The machinery would defeat the aim of the
plan: that of freeing the school organization
to make it possible to meet the needs of the
individual. It would seem a mistake to attempt
to meet problems that come, admittedly, from
the curriculum by concentrating on its admin-
istration alone.

Experience with the plan seems to indicate
that its real contribution to educational prob-

NEED FOR AN IMPROVED EDUCATION 169

lems will be along the lines of facilitating cnrric-
nlmn changes. The freeing process for both
teacher and pupil it accomplishes will help clar-
ify the difficulties in our present system. If the
plan ultimately enables children to read, write
and figure better than they learn to do now, it
will be because it puts the responsibility for
effort on the child, developing an intelligent, re-
sourceful method of attack that will give a better
product. If it proves to be a method for short-
ening the years in preparatory schools, it will
not be because it permits a pupil to get through
a fixed syllabi more quickly, but because of the
liberation of the individual's abilities that en-
ables him to profit more from every experience.
That is, the mental habits and character quali-
ties that are apparently fostered by the plan
will force the elimination of the trivial, and the
alteration of curricula to include the things that
are most essential.

School organization plans for individual
study and subject promotion are often criticized
by the leaders in progressive education on the
grounds that they tend toward a fixed depart-
mentalization and so interfere with building up
a school where children can lead a real and com-

170 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

plete life. There is no doubt that, if the Dalton
Laboratory Plan is regarded simply as an effi-
ciency measure, an opportunity to help pupils
learn the facts of a fixed course of study more
thoroughly and perhaps save a year or two of
their school life, this might result.

But the plan appears to have a contribution
for the school that is interested in a more com-
plete reorganization to meet the three needs
of modern society outlined above. In such
schools, the aim is not to help the children get
through a certain amount of classified informa-
tion but to have them get control of their own
powers and the tools of learning through using
them in a school life that explains the real
world. Obviously, this requires a carefully set-
up environment and sufficient drill to insure the
efficient use of tools. This environment will be
classified in terms that seem best to present the
desired type experiences to children. With the
laboratory plan the subject rooms and assign-
ments can be set up in these terms. The con-
tract will not be assignments in five academic
subjects, but two or three large topics for study.
This study will require work in a general science
laboratory, in the library, in the carpenter shop

NEED FOR AN IMPROVED EDUCATION 171

and studio as well as composition, arithmetic
and geography. The whole project can be
planned by the staff of teachers cooperating to
insure a proper proportion between the sub-
jects and opportunities for the necessary drill.
This would be the pupils' contract. Then by
consultation with individual teachers, the class
could fill in the details of their contracts ; what
portions of the work will be done in each labora-
tory. As a child needs special advice or equip-
ment, he will go to the appropriate laboratory.
In this way, all written work will be exercises
in EnglishjComposition and penmanship, as well
as having value in its content. Arithmetic, that
is done in connection with cooking or geog-
raphy, will be done under the supervision of
the mathematics teacher and so will be advanc-
ing the pupil in his control of that tool and at
the same time have an immediate end.

Many schools have organized the curriculum
on this basis. They have had to change the con-
ventional idea of subjects and the usual man-
agement of the time schedule to meet conditions
of productive work. A number have already de-
veloped an organization similar to the Dalton
Plan for their shop, cooking or art work. These

172 THE DALTON LABORATORY PLAN

subjects are not taught at certain fixed times,
but the pupil uses the resources of the teacher
and the laboratory as he needs to sew, cook, do
wood work or use art principles and technique
for the larger topic. The experiment of includ-
ing other subjects in the category of work-shops
would facilitate some of the difficulties of the
project method. The school librarian is avail-
able at any hour of the day the child needs to
consult reference books or select reading. Why
not have the English teacher available when-
ever the class is actually writing a story, a geog-
raphy report or a science paper! The divi-
sions to be made in the curriculum and the limi-
tations of the method will be fixed by the njeeds
and condition of the particular school.

Complete experiences, individual work and
scope for interests are essentials in both the
Dalton Plan and the *' project method," when
either is explained in theoretical terms. If these
essentials are made concrete with the needs of
childhood in mind, there should be no conflict
between the two methods. Neither will stand
the test of time, unless it is adjusted to meet
particular situations and new needs. The diffi-
culty is often an inability to separate education

NEED FOR AN IMPROVED EDUCATION 173

from our conception of what schools must be.
The project method has freed itself from one
side of this conception, the school of classified
and isolated facts. The Dalton Plan frees itself
from the other half, the school of piecemeal as-
signments, bells and herd learning and recita-
tions. One contributes a new subject matter to
meet the needs of modem life ; the other a way
to give children working conditions that accord
with the discoveries of modem psychology. AU
such experiments furnish the stuff from
which new schools that shall truly educate all
our children wiU be built.

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